> Hello,
>
> Maybe some of you already came across my latest blog entry - it's about
> the comparison of a few Ruby vs Java idioms. Basically I wrote it
> because I just learning Ruby and I was astonished by it's power, and
> well, I just blogged about a few tasks I solved recently. It can be
> found here:
>
> http://www.rubyrailways.com/sometimes-less-is-more/

I read it but was turned off by what I saw as technical errors.

  * neither the empty Java program nor the empty Ruby program does
    'literally nothing'.

  * it loudly states that it is only covering 'features of the
    language' and not libraries, but requires ActiveSupport for half
    of the examples.

  * attr_accessor is not *that* big of a deal.  even C programmers can
    do something very similar.

  * there is a disclaimer that it's not language bashing, but the tone
    clearly comes across to me as language bashing.

I understand where you're trying to go--and agreed with you before you
even started!--but I'm not getting there from the text.  I read your
section on arrays for example and think to myself 'yeah, Ruby has
dynamic lists, like Perl, Python, Lisp ...'.

I have almost no knowledge of Java idioms, so I can't help there.  The
guy who is claiming you can do everything with reflection sounds like
he's on to something, but I have some doubt that anyone is really
using "byte code enhancement" instead of typing 2 method definitions.
Gratuitous use of reflection in Java strikes me as code smell.

Steve