8/31    Anyone here use ruby? Is it worth learning (say for someone who
        mostly programs in perl/c)?
        \_ You don't say what your intended use is.  For what?  For personal
           pleasure because you're a language geek?  For work?  For a big
           team project?  For one off throw away code?  What?
           \_ I've been hearing a lot about it from co-workers and
              I wanted to know if I should spend some time to learn
              it b/c it is one of those things that any reasonable
              unix person is expected to know.
              Also it is pretty nice, I'd like to re-write some of
              my personal perl programs so I can ditch perl.
        \_ Yeah, it's worth learning, why? Because it's not perl. I'd suggest
           learning Python over Ruby (probably bigger base). Scripting in
           perl just plain sucks, especially if you have to come back to
           it in a couple of months and update the crap.
           \_ If you write crap code in ruby, it will still be crap code
              months from now.  Don't blame the language if you're a shitty
              programmer.
        \_ I started on it.  I read all the online intro/how-to/beginner docs
           but since I'm already proficient with perl I just couldn't find a
           real excuse to write anything in ruby.  Same thing happened to me
           with python.  Yes, there are some things that might be somewhat
           easier in one language over the others, but not so much better
           that I saw value in climbing the learning curve for the rest of it.
        \_ So, all the "small clean code" fans I know swear by it,
           including my boss.  They usually say it's got the best of Perl
           and Python, plus some new features.
           \_ Getting paid to write in it is different than choosing to
              because you like it.  If my boss swore by it I'd be over that
              pesky little learning curve.  :-)
        \_ I use ruby for scripting, primarily because I know Smalltalk
           and I don't know perl. Ruby has a bit of kitchen-sink syndrome
           (let's throw in another language construct / feature!), but
            all-in-all it's decent.
           If you can already do everything you need to in perl,
           there's probably no need to learn ruby, but, I think ruby programs
           are usually easier to read and ruby has some features like
           continuations that are good to know for general programming
           knowledge.  - ciyer
        \_ I've started to use it.  A buddy of mine who was a bigtime
           coldfusion programmer says that Ruby on Rails is prob one of
           the coolest things out now for web app dev.
           see: http://www.michaelbuffington.com and search for ruby.
                                                - vallard
        \_ Ruby is probably the most fun language I've ever coded in.  It makes
           writing everything as beautiful little OO jewels beautifully easy.
           It also lets you do lots of "cool hacks" that probably don't lead
           to good, maintainable code, but they're a hell of a lot of fun to
           write.  That being said, it has some issues:
           * it's the slowest modern language i've ever used
           * dynamic typing + no sigils (perl's @foo, $foo, %foo things to
             sort of indicate type) = lots of runtime errors, for me.
             supposedly if you're a better programmer this doesn't happen, but
             I'm just weak.
           --dbushong
           \_ Yeah this is what I'd say. Well, the slowness part. The lack of
              sigils is a benefit I think... if it's a problem I think you
              might try using naming conventions. But mainly I've only played
              around with it for fun because nobody at work knows about it,
              it's slower, and the smaller userbase and "stuff" out there
              for it compared to Perl. Perl's OO blows so hard though.
              \_ I think one thing Perl is teaching me is that it's important
                 to give pretty names to stupid things.  'Sigil' sounds so
                 much better than 'declare-with-every-use.'  -- ilyas
        \_ I like perl, being a slow learner I have a hard time learning
           yet another new language.  I think what you get with The use of
           ruby on rails is nice; Active Record, MVC (CRUD w/ scaffolding),
           AJAX 'api', testing and debug builtin, reflection (MINIMAL schema
           configuration), etc.  Check out the intro videos on.
           http://www.rubyonrails.org