On 11/28/05, Jeff Wood <jeff.darklight / gmail.com> wrote:
> If lines of code were the winning factor, people would almost always use
> perl for all of its infamous one-liner line-noise solutions to things...

Can't you use Ruby in place of Perl for all those one-liner line-noise
solutions?

> On 11/28/05, Peter Burns <rictic / gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 11/28/05, Christian Leskowsky <christian.leskowsky / gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I see where you're coming from.  I think there may even be a thread over
> > on
> > > java.net talking about boiler plate code in Java (eg. the new for/in
> > syntax
> > > in 1.5 was added to get rid of the repetitive iterator blocks).
> > >
> > > I wish people wouldn't use lines of code as a metric for the goodness of
> > > Ruby though.  I think Ruby is neat too, but not because I'm typing
> > less.  ;p
> > >
> > > Take care,
> > >
> > > -
> > > Chris
> > >
> >
> > Lines of code can be a predictor of the number of things that the
> > language requires the programmer to deal with.  The obvious gripe with
> > Java here is that it requires all programs to be classes, thus making
> > even a simple hello world program five lines long with all sorts of
> > crazy black box code.  I think it could be a detriment to a new
> > programmer to have to put in so much voodoo code.  It makes the system
> > seem strange and unapproachable.  The questions I always had when I
> > was learning Java as a newbie programmer like "Why do I have to put
> > static in front of my functions?" bothered me, especially when I
> > couldn't understand word one of the answers to them.
> >
> > Ruby is nice in the context of just learning to program because you
> > can generally approach one concept at a time.  I also find ruby to be
> > generally more readable, and that is very useful when all of the
> > concepts are still so new and foreign.
> >
> > I think that a new programmer would feel as though they understood
> > more of their code when writing in ruby.  If that leads one to play
> > around and try stuff out more, then that's a huge win, because
> > experimenting and seeing what happens is (for me at least) the single
> > best way to really, truly learn something.
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> "Remember. Understand. Believe. Yield! -> http://ruby-lang.org"
>
> Jeff Wood
>
>