What do you think about Ruby language?

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What do you think about Ruby language?

Postby Karlis » Tue Nov 13, 2007 12:25 am

Yes, What do you think about Ruby language?

Right now we exploring the Ruby and we will try to add some support in the next version of our editors.

Personally I'm not excited about it (I'm usually cold in relation to anything new and different that does the same that already can be done with what we have and what we know well), but people using it might have a point.
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Postby syrupcore » Tue Nov 13, 2007 10:01 pm

I like: everything is an object.
I like: syntax is loose.

I don't like: everything is an object
I don't like: syntax is loose.

:)
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Postby Karlis » Wed Nov 14, 2007 11:31 pm

:lol:
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Postby ikeo » Tue Dec 04, 2007 2:07 am

I like it a lot and Web Builder support would be great.
I use Net Beans beta currently for my Ruby/ROR coding.
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Postby syrupcore » Tue Dec 04, 2007 2:25 am

I like how readable and natural feeling it is. I like rails.
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Postby daredare » Thu Dec 20, 2007 4:19 pm

i dont know if i like it, it looks you can do the same sort of thing as with php, i dont know..
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Postby llbbl » Sat Apr 19, 2008 8:25 am

I don't think it is as good a language as PHP, Python or Perl.
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Re: What do you think about Ruby language?

Postby fuzzylogic » Sat May 10, 2008 8:11 pm

I did a bunch of research on Ruby + Ruby On Rails, had heard some good things (hype) about it and thought it was worth a look.

After many hours on the web reading various forums etc. I reached the following conclusions.

    * RoR is championed by a bunch of very obnoxious and combative supporters, for whom this is usually their first or second computer language. As such they are very gaga about how great it is and are also totally ignorant (I'm being polite here) about what it takes to produce a real world app.

    * Ruby + RoR have serious problems with deployment especially in a shared hosting environment

    * RoR has serious performance issues and is a huge memory hog

    * it also has a reputation for poor stability -- server crashes frequently, probably due to memory leaks.

    * There is nothing particularly special about RoR; php has frameworks available that can do the same thing. Ruby stole a couple of ideas from Small-Talk 80 (as in 1980) and seem to think that they have reinvented sliced toast.

    * And despite all the noise -- it is a very vocal group -- they have actually achieved very little market penetration, very few actual real world users.

    * The commercials are cute, at least some of their promoters have a good sense of humor.

Conclusion: IMHO* Ruby is an Over hyped Fad of little substance. And it has an abysmal track record of high profile flops by people who tried to use it for real-world apps (as opposed to contrived demos). There is plenty of stuff that sounds great in theory, but the real world often does not cooperate.

And when their community isn't busy stomping all over everybody else, they are busy fighting amongst themselves.

Bottom line: If you aren't a masochist I would suggest avoiding them. Besides, Blumentals ought to be putting their time into other priorities such as fixing the unusable PHP Debugger. And much better support/integration of JavaScript. If you go for depth not breadth, you will have a much better product with a real edge over the competition. Consider the numbers, everybody uses JavaScript, hardly anybody uses Ruby. Give us fantastic JavaScript capability to equal your fantastic PHP Editor and you are much more likely to increase sales. And please fix that debugger, you've had plenty of people telling you how broken it is. Eclipse is not fun to use but at least their debugger works, in fact it's the best one I've seen (but still has room for improvement).

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* My basis for this not so humble opinion, besides the many hours that I spent on the web reading about Ruby+RoR, is that I have been programming since the 80s and in more different computer languages then I can count. Highfaluting theories don't impress me, real-world performance does, and so far Ruby has failed to deliver.
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Re: What do you think about Ruby language?

Postby llbbl » Tue May 13, 2008 4:55 pm

Blumentals ought to be putting their time into other priorities such as fixing the unusable PHP Debugger.

I totally agree.

Did you all hear that Twitter is dropping Ruby and going to recode their entire site in PHP or Python. Ruby is not very stable.
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Re: What do you think about Ruby language?

Postby multifarious » Fri May 16, 2008 4:15 pm

I agree with most of what fuzzylogic there said. Specifically the bit about real-world-enterprise-scale application. I have yet to see one done with Ruby or RoR and considering what I've seen from Ruby I'm pretty sure I can counter each example with a more stable and blindingly fast (in comparison) alternative in PHP or Java/JSP.

I also agree on the general attitude of Ruby users. This has actually put me off completely: I'm not waiting to be adressed as a newbie by some frecklefaced brat who wouldn't know the difference between a factory and a proxy pattern if his life depended on it (not even with full access to google). This pretty much happened all three times I went out to look for help so I just completely gave up on it.
I know, not the best reason to give up on a technology, but I'm in this game to make kick-ass applications, not to marvell about the beauty of any given language syntax. If comming to grips with it means I have to submit myself to such a community then I'd rather use a hammer and chisel..
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Re: What do you think about Ruby language?

Postby joemichaud » Fri May 16, 2008 11:44 pm

I would much rather see my beloved WeBuilder continue to be better at what it currently does than expand to do more but in a mediocre fashion. Your products already cover an enormous range of languages and I genuinely believe that your business will grow faster if you "stay the course" with the languages you already support.
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