Ruby - what is it

[Cyclups]

I have over the past few years heard a lot (empty?) Buzz about this programming language, but has never really bothered to try it - maybe because it just funny name - or simply because I do not really have needed it.

But anyway, is there anyone who can explain to me what is so called Ruby? I would greatly appreciate a technical explanation rather than the usual "language X is great because it is better than language Y" and "language X is the wildest man totally like poetry - you have some hash?" comments.

[Katty]

Ruby is a dynamic typed, object oriented language with collection, like Python and groovy.

This kind of language is quite modern for the time being. It is assumed that it costs less to develop the same functionality in the kind of language than in more traditional static typed languages, and that they are safe enough for the average business app.

Popularity of Ruby is very much driven by the popularity of Ruby on Rails (ROR), a web application framework that has gained some popularity.

[Zecho]

You owe yourself to learn at least one language of the category. But whether you choose Ruby, Python or groovy (or whatever the fourth) is in my opinion not so important.

Of course there are differences. And some will undoubtedly clearly prefer one over the other. But the 10,000 meters is the same thing.

[Cyclups]

Okay, so far so good. In practice, what does this mean more precisely that you can in Ruby / ROR (and possibly. Similar language) which you can not, for example. PHP?

Incidentally I find the idea of 'Convention over Configuration' as a little uncomfortable. When I have written a program, I will not have the computer that starts to do anything I have not asked it of? I know it is not quite such it is yet - it works with just one word 'creepy' (as in the cheerless, but also as in 'feature creep').

[kelfro]

Now, ROR is just a framework written in Ruby. That is the way you use the ROR. If you are unhappy there is nothing that stops you from writing a framework itself. But I think there are several ways to "overwrite" the things or what to call it.

[Katty]

Okay, so far so good. In practice, what does this mean more precisely that you can in Ruby / ROR (and possibly. Similar language) which you can not, for example. PHP?

Incidentally I find the idea of 'Convention over Configuration' as a little uncomfortable. When I have written a program, I will not have the computer that starts to do anything I have not asked it of? I know it is not quite such it is yet - it works with just one word 'creepy' (as in the cheerless, but also as in 'feature creep').

PHP is not so far from Ruby and ROR, so it's probably not the most illustrative comparison. You should rather compare with the frameworks as Struts and JSF (both from Java EE world). You must make long long configuration files to get the world to work.

With CoC are: low something easy and if we need something beyond the normal so that you make a configuration exception.

[Modifier]

And it is funny enough that never prevailed. If I include the JSF & Struts still exists, people write the closest XML nightmare if you mention them.

For Ruby it's always good to some "scripting" language for rapid development but unfortunately, these languages are often very pragmatic. Now, Ruby is one of the better, but for example, Python is something that belongs on the board of a university, not in reality (unless people really love to write __SELF__).

[MindSpace]

One of the reasons that I prefer Python to Ruby, I think just Python is "batteries included" idea that there is a reasonable large standard library to cope with a lot of tasks. Of course, there are modules for all the same thing in Ruby, but there is much less in a default installation.

[Katty]

And it is funny enough that never prevailed. If I include the JSF & Struts still exists, people write the closest XML nightmare if you mention them.

For Ruby it's always good to some "scripting" language for rapid development but unfortunately, these languages are often very pragmatic. Now, Ruby is one of the better, but for example, Python is something that belongs on the board of a university, not in reality (unless people really love to write __SELF__).

Try and make a reality check.

Both Struts and JSF are turned over.

They are alone in the same weight class as a general ASP.NET and PHP in general.

[Praetor]

Starts with saying that I do not even have touched Ruby much and not active users.

I would probably describe Ruby as most related to Python, but... laid more emphasis on object orientation (everything is an object general operations are always performed as a method call) and you can actually extend runtime also BUILTIN with new methods. That way you can fairly have high degree redefine language dynamic. (It's one thing particularly ROR exploits, as far as I know.) Object Model are very similar to Smalltalk, which is absolutely a "duck-typing" and it is possible to define a meta-method which is called if a method does not exist.

Moreover, there are also fairly good support for the functional paradigm (think Lisp, Haskell), mostly in the form of code blocks are given as a kind of argument to a function, usually becomes the block as used by the body of an iterator, or otherwise aspect. Eg. will block given to a function that opens a text file be run for each line in the file and the file is then implicitly closed after all lines are processed.

The syntax is relatively short and use keywords more symbols. (More symbols than in Python and lua, probably slightly less than in C++, well almost like C#.) There is to some extent, support for "several of doing things" a little like Perl, you can eg. put a condition after an instruction (x=x+1 if y>10).

Although I have never really been able to go with the language, I prefer Python (And PHP web because I can swat some things together without having to set up a framework first).

[Cyclups]

I could probably also in principle - have just felt it was a bit superfluous, but without really having any knowledge of the language. But certainly I felt the answers here confirms my prejudice.