Does anyone else find that this is not sufficient to describe the
effect of Ruby language?
I've heard the effect distorted(minimized) by resistant Java
programmers as "syntactic sugar".
It's much more than that. It's deeper, isn't it?
But I don't know the word or description to counter the
minimization. Mostly I'm in shock that a programmer could be exposed
to Ruby and still be spewing such distortions.
The reason I care is because I'm tired of being downstream from java
web apps!
The OP was about PHP, which I like and am productive with, but
stands a snowball's chance in hell of recruiting Java programmers.
Does anyone else find that this is not sufficient to describe the
effect of Ruby language?
Agree. Well written Ruby code and Rails code in particular should
practically read like english. You know its written well when your
non-coding Dad can kind of half follow it.
I've heard the effect distorted(minimized) by resistant Java
programmers as "syntactic sugar".
To work in Java at some of the extreme ends of its syntax abuse
spectrum requires that you do one of three things:
1 - burn out the parts of your brain that can appreciate syntax elegance
2 - perversely alter the parts of your brain to reverse your evaluation
of elegance (elegant = ! isElegant() )
3 - isolate yourself from the mainstream rules for elegance, and derive
an entire value spectrum that lives wholly in the ugly end
While I appreciate the usefulness of Java, the category 2 people
have split many normally healthy java programmers into the first
and last groups.
But I don't know the word or description to counter the
minimization. Mostly I'm in shock that a programmer could be exposed
to Ruby and still be spewing such distortions.
Career protection denial. Java takes a monstrous amount of your
career investment in technology. Its not easy to take all at once,
seeing years of specialisation erode like that. So you get sniping
comments like that from idiots, whereas smarter Java programmers
smell the coffee and diversify their skills (like they should have
been doing anyway).
Career protection denial. Java takes a monstrous amount of your
career investment in technology. Its not easy to take all at once,
seeing years of specialisation erode like that. So you get sniping
comments like that from idiots, whereas smarter Java programmers
smell the coffee and diversify their skills (like they should have
been doing anyway).
Of course, JRuby getting direct support from Sun, will pull Ruby into
the mainstream of Java. Since Rails is the current benchmark for Ruby
language compliance, when JRuby will run Rails well, we can expect it
to be shipped as a standard part of the JRE.
At last benchmark, JRuby was performing just about twice as fast as
standard Ruby when the JIT compile is enabled. It runs Rails with
occasional errors, so it is not ready for release yet. I anticipate
that the JRE will become the preferred platform for Ruby in a couple
of years.
Does anyone else find that this is not sufficient to describe the
effect of Ruby language?
Agree. Well written Ruby code and Rails code in particular should
practically read like english. You know its written well when your
non-coding Dad can kind of half follow it.
It's nice when that happens -- and lots of Ruby does have that "almost
like English" feel -- but I wouldn't make too much of it as a
criterion of code quality per se. It can bog you down in concerns
that will never really play out. Rails certainly plays up the quasi-
natural-language aspects of Ruby, and to good effect, but there's also
a lot of very elegant, idiomatic Ruby code around that doesn't read
like English -- and that's OK too
- you had connectors to all enterprise data sources so you could
stitch stuff together in the middleware
- you had an event-based middleware that could be used to unify and
rationalize and make manageable and scalable all the kludgey hacks
that were holding everything together at that point.
- you had JHTML and servlets (oooh, extending the server itself) that
was pretty wild
Today:
- nobody used the connector architecture, they still just use JDBC,
using the connector architecture is scary, very little support and
you end up paying a million bucks for it. Nothing is connected.
- nobody used the event-based middleware. scary to get dependent on
that. there is no support or industry to support getting tied to the
million dollar middleware. Today, 2007, we still have all the
kludgey hacks, even more of them, holding together the various
enterprise initiatives. Nothing is unified.
- JHTML is old hat, servlets old hat
- we're stuck with the clunky web app in the clunky language that was
intended to work seamlessly with the above two technologies, that
never panned out.
- and, if you managed to be standardized and connected and unified in
what you did, your job would be offshored.
ways to break the ice...ways to break the ice...it's inertia. The
problem is inertia. What to do?
> Agree. Well written Ruby code and Rails code in particular should
> practically read like english. You know its written well when your
> non-coding Dad can kind of half follow it.
It's nice when that happens -- and lots of Ruby does have that "almost
like English" feel -- but I wouldn't make too much of it as a
criterion of code quality per se. It can bog you down in concerns
that will never really play out. Rails certainly plays up the quasi-
natural-language aspects of Ruby, and to good effect, but there's also
a lot of very elegant, idiomatic Ruby code around that doesn't read
like English -- and that's OK too
:lol
Had a debate about this recently with a colleague, where we are doing
some pretty funky stuff at the WATIR/Ruby Testing end of the spectrum.
He has got some pretty serious turnkey testing done and he quizzed me
about what made for 'good' or 'elegant' Ruby syntax. After a really long
response by me, I basically concluded:
Write it, DRY it, get the tester to read it/understand it. Natural language
coding looks lovely, but I will leave it for the DSLs. I don't want him
distracted from what he is doing, which could be the start of a testing
breakthrough at our company.
