Talk:Ruby (programming language)/Archive 1

POV issues

Some of the text of this article seems non-NPOV. For example "clean syntax" and "obvious syntax" seem rather subjective. It doesn't bother me too much, but someone who is familar with the language (and not biased :-) ) might want to NPOV the text. --Frecklefoot 19:08 16 May 2003 (UTC)

In fairness, and with considerable experience of using Ruby after unhappy experiences with many other programming languages, I can only concur with those representations. It is syntactically very clear and also extremely obvious to anyone with an understanding of OO concepts. --Sjc 13:12, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The amount of POV-ish criticism in this article, much of it repetitive, as compared with other language articles like python, lisp, etc, is astounding. 24.19.241.5 (talk)

Hello World!

1. "Hello World" is already in the article, under "Blocks and iterators".

1. I disagree about using "Hello World" in every programming language article because it is considered a standard example. It should especially be avoided for a high level language like Ruby in which it consists of a single, straight-forward expression. Any non-trivial example, say a program that (for example) constructs and uses a hash, involving the creation of a string object and printing it to the standard output, provides all information that can be found in a "Hello World" program, and much more.

The question is not whether it can be included in the article, but whether there are not better ways to use the same space. Note also the existence of the Hello world program page, which exists to cover this "standard example". --Fredrik | talk 11:57, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm confused. What change are you proposing? To remove the existing "Hello World" references in the article (under "Blocks...")? I'm all for it, since the code under that section doesn't run by itself anyways (blocks don't work out of the method calling context) and thus can be confusing. And if you want to change "Hello world" to "This is a block", I'd be happy too. Other than that, there aren't another other "Hello World"s in the article, so what exactly were you disagreeing with?

There was a second "Hell World" example. See the article history. --Fredrik | talk 23:45, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Use the fibonacci numbers. --84.152.107.86 14:23, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Name

Exact copy of entry posted June 12, 2001 8:02 am by Stephen Gilbert.

Copied to change name from "Ruby language" to "Ruby programming language" to match other language names.

For the record, I had little to do with this article, other then the editing. The original editing history was pruned. --Stephen Gilbert

Swift creation

So this guy created the language in one day? Cool. --AxelBoldt

Of course not :) --Taw

Section removal proposal

That section dealing with mailing lists should be removed, I think. It is not encyclopedic, and most other languages do not have mailing lists as a section. Plus, what does it really inform the reader about? --Maru 05:19, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I was going to do it, but I checked whether this had already been debated before. Done. --Chealer 02:28, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Compiling

I'm not sure that Ruby has ever been compiled yet. AFAIK JRuby is a port of the interpreter to java byte code, but does not compile the underlying ruby? --User:TomCounsell

Correct. But even as an interpreted language it is blindingly fast. --Sjc 13:12, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I like Ruby, but one thing it is not, is fast. 146.145.251.68 17:04, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

So there's agreement that no Ruby compilers exist? I plan to remove the misleading claim: "It was originally designed as an interpreted language, though in its JRuby implementation it may be compiled." --Ds13 07:31, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I've done some checking and it should probably be removed. There are a number of projects working on compiler type entities for ruby, but none that are beyond beta yet. --TomCounsell

YARV contains a bytecode compiler. --drbrain 19:00, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

And JRuby now contains a partial compiler that will grow as we continue working on it. In true, we do have a compiler now, but it only handles a subset of Ruby constructs, warning about those it doesn't recognize yet or leaving them to be interpreted. --Headius

There are several projects aimed at creating a Ruby --> Parrot bytecode compiler, namely Ruth, and Ripper. Can't find much on either. Ruby 2's official implementation will use bytecode, see http://wiki.rubygarden.org/Ruby/page/show/Rite Wootery 18:34, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Implementations

Ruby has three main implementations: the official Ruby interpreter, which is the most widely used, JRuby, a Java-based implementation, and RPG Maker XP, a Windows XP program used to create role-playing games.

RPG Maker XP is not a Ruby implementation, although it includes one (RGSS). My understanding of the main Ruby implementation's license is that commercial products like RPG Maker can include the interpreter, provided that they include either the source code or a pointer to ruby-lang.org. Does anyone have this game, and if so, can you tell me whether RGSS is a new implementation? - Beinsane 05:44, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

And to answer my own question...the RPG Maker website [1] has a copyright notice crediting Matsumoto for Ruby. The article will be edited. - Beinsane 05:47, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

also the help-file of the program carries a link to ruby-lang.org on the first (root) page about RGSS in the About This Document section.

Criticisms and Possible surprises

An anonymous user has come and turned 'Possible surprises' into 'Criticisms and Possible surprises'. If you read the section as it is now, the new items in the list do not really correspond to the list description "some features differ from languages such as C or Perl:". Jogloran 22:25, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Ruby suffers from unconventional and below-average release management. First, Ruby version numbers are used differently from most other projects. Version 1.8.2 is not compatible with version 1.8.4. With Ruby, point releases are roughly equivalent to major releases of other projects. And since there is only 3 digits in the version number, there are no bugfix releases such as 1.8.2.1--instead, users must rely on snapshots of the repository for which there is no guarantee of backward compatibility. Another example is the release of Ruby 1.8.3 which broke Ruby's most well-known and popular application: Ruby on Rails.

"Omission of parentheses around method arguments may lead to unexpected results." -- like what? First I've heard of it. The fact that get/set methods are indistinguishable from fields is a feature, not a bug. Metamatic 20:46, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I got some clarification from Matz. The issue is with methods that take multiple arguments, and that's what may be disallowed in the future. I've reworded accordingly. Also, I've never seen a book recommend omitting brackets for multi-argument methods, so I've tightened that wording too. Metamatic 20:49, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

In an expression like "puts Array.new 5, nil" the receiver of nil is ambiguous. In future versions such an expression will cause a syntax error. With "Array.new 5, nil" the receiver is not ambiguous so parentheses are not necessary. --drbrain 11:54, 18 June 2006 (UTC)