Red Squirrel Reflections
Dave Hoover explores the psychology of software development
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Red Squirrel Reflections
Dave Hoover explores the psychology of software development
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Thu, 21 Apr 2005Sam wrote about bridging the gap between Java and Ruby. Chris commented that Ruby doesn't just compete with Java, it also competes with its forefather Perl..."...while Ruby is cleaner than Perl it's not really that different -- they're niches are much the same."Other than the spelling error, this sentence makes sense to me. My first language was Perl (a secret I've successfully hidden from many Java-bigots). Over the last 6 weeks I've been writing Perl full-time for my client, a financial trading firm in Chicago. This has been great fun as I've been able to reintroduce myself to the wealth of CPAN and the power of Perl (in contrast to the verbosity of Java). If I had my choice, though, I'd be writing Ruby. While Chris is right that there are many similarities between Perl and Ruby, the differences between OO Perl and Ruby can't be understated. Like Chris, I doubt there will be a big migration from Perl to Ruby anytime soon. One reason for this is that Perl is everywhere. This is one of the reasons why I've been writing Perl for the last six weeks. Perl is already installed on every server (Windows and *nix) in the company, while there are only a handful of people here that have even heard of Ruby. Rails is bringing more attention to Ruby. But I don't think that Ruby is going to gain a significant mindshare advantage until someone produces a groundbreaking IDE for it. That is something that Java developers are accustomed to and dynamic language folks have always coveted (with exceptions). |
