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Interesting examples you mentioned. Go, I can understand. But why Ruby? It is just as old as Python, behaves very similarly, and its ecosystem for non-web rela

by GuiA 12y ago

Interesting examples you mentioned. Go, I can understand. But why Ruby? It is just as old as Python, behaves very similarly, and its ecosystem for non-web related tasks pales in comparison. And why Scratch? I really enjoy it (I've taught many workshops to kids 6-14 yo with it) but I would absolutely not use it in anything else but introductory classes.

erikb 12y ago
The reason for Ruby is that more playful things seem to happen in that ecosystem. If you want to push something you want to be at the edge right? And although I believe Python and Ruby are equal in many qualities, Ruby is closer to the edge of where the next development happens. That was the reason behind my decision to add that.
- anko 12y ago
  This. I don't know why more creativity seems to happen in the ruby ecosystem, but it really does. My preference of ruby over python comes down to elegance and string interpolation operators (ie. not much). But ruby attracts people trying to do interesting things. Some examples; Puppet, Chef, Vagrant, github, Jekyll. I'm noticing similar cutting edge infrastructure/service stuff being written in go by default.
  - bjt 12y ago
    I think Ruby hit its peak at the same time as people were deciding what language to write Puppet, Chef, Vagrant, Jekyll, and Github in, but it's more a coincidence than something inherent in the language that led to those choices. Salt and Ansible, successors to Puppet and Chef, are written in Python. The author of Vagrant is writing his new tools in Go. The buzz and constant churn of new shiny things that I saw in the Ruby community a few years ago seems to have moved more to the node.js community these days.
    - anko 12y ago
      I know I'm late to reply, but i'm interested. What cool stuff is happening in the node.js community. The only thing I can think of that is really cool is meteor. I think the thing that sucks about node is that javascript sucks. It's really a horrible language, it's just that it's everywhere. It's not the most horrible, but the type coercion, scoping and standard libraries really suck. When you say salt and ansible are successors to puppet and chef, it sounds like you are saying they are inherently better, but really they just came later. Out of interest are you saying you don't believe in Paul Graham's language spectrum? Blub paradox and that?
- pwang 12y ago
  > If you want to push something you want to be at the edge right? Wrong. You need to be at the core. In many areas that I've looked at, most of the activity happening at the edge is just churn from an ignorance of history and a naive blindness or lack of understanding of root problems. And there is plenty of interesting stuff happening in Python: compilers, visualization systems, devops orchestration, you name it. Don't mistake the noise on HN for reality.

by GuiA 12y ago

erikb 12y ago

The reason for Ruby is that more playful things seem to happen in that ecosystem. If you want to push something you want to be at the edge right? And although I believe Python and Ruby are equal in many qualities, Ruby is closer to the edge of where the next development happens. That was the reason behind my decision to add that.

anko 12y ago
This. I don't know why more creativity seems to happen in the ruby ecosystem, but it really does. My preference of ruby over python comes down to elegance and string interpolation operators (ie. not much). But ruby attracts people trying to do interesting things. Some examples; Puppet, Chef, Vagrant, github, Jekyll. I'm noticing similar cutting edge infrastructure/service stuff being written in go by default.
- bjt 12y ago
  I think Ruby hit its peak at the same time as people were deciding what language to write Puppet, Chef, Vagrant, Jekyll, and Github in, but it's more a coincidence than something inherent in the language that led to those choices. Salt and Ansible, successors to Puppet and Chef, are written in Python. The author of Vagrant is writing his new tools in Go. The buzz and constant churn of new shiny things that I saw in the Ruby community a few years ago seems to have moved more to the node.js community these days.
  - anko 12y ago
    I know I'm late to reply, but i'm interested. What cool stuff is happening in the node.js community. The only thing I can think of that is really cool is meteor. I think the thing that sucks about node is that javascript sucks. It's really a horrible language, it's just that it's everywhere. It's not the most horrible, but the type coercion, scoping and standard libraries really suck. When you say salt and ansible are successors to puppet and chef, it sounds like you are saying they are inherently better, but really they just came later. Out of interest are you saying you don't believe in Paul Graham's language spectrum? Blub paradox and that?
pwang 12y ago
> If you want to push something you want to be at the edge right? Wrong. You need to be at the core. In many areas that I've looked at, most of the activity happening at the edge is just churn from an ignorance of history and a naive blindness or lack of understanding of root problems. And there is plenty of interesting stuff happening in Python: compilers, visualization systems, devops orchestration, you name it. Don't mistake the noise on HN for reality.