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> Finding the right tool for the job should be much much more important That's the most overstated claim in programming. LESS is the "right tool for the job" w

by Touche 13y ago

> Finding the right tool for the job should be much much more important That's the most overstated claim in programming. LESS is the "right tool for the job" when the job is styling web pages. Ruby is a general purpose programming language, the jobs it is good for is everything not covered by DSLs like LESS, the same as all other general purpose languages.

spellboots 13y ago
Not true. Ruby is great for a lot of stuff, but a very poor choice for e.g. scientific computing (scipy/numpy are a far better choice than the very immature sciruby), and plenty of other use cases where there are other "general purpose languages" that are far more suited to certain problems.
laureny 13y ago
> Ruby is a general purpose programming language I question that. Ruby is very slow, dynamically typed and suffers from scaling challenges because of its multithreading support. I think Ruby is increasingly falling into a niche: prototyping. Get a prototype up and running in a few weeks and once the proof of concept is established, switch to a statically typed language on the JVM.
- spoiler 13y ago
  I disagree. Ruby was slow (still is), but that trend is changing. More and more effort is put into speeding up and modernising Ruby in general. It might have only begun to mature, but it's definitely getting a there. Rubinius is a lot faster than MRI and has proper multithreading support. There is also JRuby, which runs on JVM.
- dham 13y ago
  Ruby the language is no more slow then Javascript the language is. Yes Javascript on IE8 engine is slow. On V8 it is not. Ruby on MRI is slow(though for most people, it's fast enough). Ruby on JVM is not.
- auxbuss 13y ago
  Not at all, as the latest web framework benchmarks showed: http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r8&hw=i7&test=json http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r8&hw=i7... (see rack-jruby, 86.3%) It's really a question of how and what you run. And yes, the JVM is one of those options.

by Touche 13y ago

spellboots 13y ago

Not true. Ruby is great for a lot of stuff, but a very poor choice for e.g. scientific computing (scipy/numpy are a far better choice than the very immature sciruby), and plenty of other use cases where there are other "general purpose languages" that are far more suited to certain problems.

laureny 13y ago

> Ruby is a general purpose programming language I question that. Ruby is very slow, dynamically typed and suffers from scaling challenges because of its multithreading support. I think Ruby is increasingly falling into a niche: prototyping. Get a prototype up and running in a few weeks and once the proof of concept is established, switch to a statically typed language on the JVM.

spoiler 13y ago
I disagree. Ruby was slow (still is), but that trend is changing. More and more effort is put into speeding up and modernising Ruby in general. It might have only begun to mature, but it's definitely getting a there. Rubinius is a lot faster than MRI and has proper multithreading support. There is also JRuby, which runs on JVM.
dham 13y ago
Ruby the language is no more slow then Javascript the language is. Yes Javascript on IE8 engine is slow. On V8 it is not. Ruby on MRI is slow(though for most people, it's fast enough). Ruby on JVM is not.
auxbuss 13y ago
Not at all, as the latest web framework benchmarks showed: http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r8&hw=i7&test=json http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r8&hw=i7... (see rack-jruby, 86.3%) It's really a question of how and what you run. And yes, the JVM is one of those options.