On 1 Jun 2007, at 08:55, Jim Zhang wrote:

> Hi,
>
> The reason to send this mail is that I am still wondering why I  
> should study
> and use Ruby.

Because Ruby is here and working now :-)

Because it's a nice language with some nice frameworks?

Because learning new languages is always good?

Because out-of-the-box OOP code becomes _so_ much nicer?

Because you'll encounter stuff that will make you a better Perl  
developer?

> I used perl for 5 years and recently I try to study and use  
> Ruby...  I can't
> wait perl6 to relase.

Me neither. Perl 6 looks fun - especially having the grammar as a  
first class type. Now that has possibilities for deep fun.

I'm also still hoping Parrot will get some traction. Having used a  
system with multiple languages compiling down to the same VM in the  
eighties I know it can lead to some darn funky stuff.

> sb. says Ruby is an alternative for perl, but how's when compared with
> perl6? Ruby's vision vs Perl6's version?

I'd say they're quite different. Perl 6 is Perl with the dials turned  
up to 11. Perl's TMTOWTDI is even more apparent - with the swiss army  
chainsaw picking up more from functional languages, AOP, etc.

Ruby on the other hand does its best to be a small, elegant OOP  
language. Which  is a darn nice thing.

Cheers,

Adrian