From the FAQ [http://www.rubycentral.com/faq/rubyfaq.html] ''([escargo] 16 Jan 2008 - This gives a file not found error.''):

    :   “Ruby is a simple and powerful object-oriented programming language, created by Yukihiro Matsumoto (who goes by the handle "matz" in this document and on the mailing lists). <<br>> <<br>> “Like [Perl], Ruby is good at text processing. Like [Smalltalk], everything in Ruby is an object, and Ruby has blocks, [iterators], meta-classes and other good stuff. <<br>> <<br>> “You can use Ruby to write servers, experiment with prototypes, and for everyday programming tasks. As a fully-integrated object-oriented language, Ruby scales well.”

[RLH] Scales well? In what way?

Ruby doesn't have true threads and is known to have performance issues, a quote from a rant of a long-time Ruby user [http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html] notes about RoR:
    :   “The main Rails application that DHH created required restarting _400 times/day. That's a production application that can't stay up for more than 4 minutes on average.”

The home page for Ruby is http://www.ruby-lang.org/

Its most articulate advocates write such descriptions as,
    :   “... it has a couple of real killer features; in particular the way blocks and the pervasive use of the visitor pattern come together change the way one writes programs for the better.”

A lot of the attention Ruby has gotten lately is due to Ruby on Rails[http://www.rubyonrails.org/].

During Oct 2007, [http://www.sitepoint.com/books/rails1/] was
making "''Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications''" available
in PDF format for free...

This author summaries Rail's guiding principles as:

   * convention over configuration (assumptions for defaults rather than requiring extensive initial configuration) [http://softwareengineering.vazexqi.com/files/pattern.html]
   * [DRY]
   * [agile] development

----

There is a Ruby/Tk if you want to bring your [Tk] skills into a new world:

  require 'tk'
  root = TkRoot.new() { title "Hello, world!" }
  Tk.mainloop()

(from [http://httpd.chello.nl/k.vangelder/ruby/learntk/])
More on Ruby/Tk
(for [MacOS]!) appears in the "Ruby/Tk Primer:  Creating a ''cron'' GUI 
Interface with Ruby/Tk"
[http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/06/25/ruby_pt1.html].

Note, however, that at least one survey [http://www.pressure.to/ruby_gui_survey/] suggests that acceptance of RubyTk is dwindling. 

----
===
 What: '''Ruby'''
 Where: http://www.ruby-lang.org/ 
        http://www.rubycentral.com/book/ext_tk.html 
        http://poignantguide.net/ruby/
 Description: Programming language for quick and easy programming.
        A clean, consistent language design where everything is an object,
        [CLU] style iterators, singleton classes/methods, and
        lexical closures.  Makes use of [Tk] (with bindings similar in
        concept to [Perl/Tk]) for its GUI support.
        Currently at version 1.8.4 .
 Updated: 08/2003
 Contact: mailto:webmaster@ruby-lang.org 
===
----
See [http://www.rubycentral.com/book/ext_tk.html] for more information.
''([escargo] 16 Jan 2008 - This gives a file not found error. This link
[http://www.rubycentral.com/pickaxe/ext_tk.html] is about Ruby Tk.'')

This 
[http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=10104/ur0611l/] 
review of '''Ruby Cookbook''' tries to give a sense for how
Ruby feels.

----
[RS]: Like [Scheme], Ruby has arbitrary-size integers as default - another hint that Tcl should have it too... [Octet-packed integers] come to mind..

[AK]:
I consider the [Octet-packed integers] more something of a file-format, and less of an in-memory format.
Note aside: In [Slim Binaries] I refer to the paper about ''Universal Symbol Files''. This paper
advances the notion of octet-packed integers too, albeit slightly differently than [metakit] if I read the
code right. - [RS]: Well, a very simple alternative would be to just keep the string rep and let [expr] work on that if it runs into a "integer value too large to represent".

[NEM] notes in Jan 2008 that Tcl 8.5 does indeed now have arbitrary-size integers.
----
Within the Ruby community work on an alternative to Rails has produced http://merbivore.com/ which is a modular [MVC] [framework].
----
See [http://www.approximity.com/ruby/Comparison_rb_st_m_java.html] for one comparison of Ruby to
[C++],
[CLOS],
[Dylan],
[Java],
[Objective C],
[Perl],
[PHP],
[Python],
[Smalltalk],

----

Ruby vs Tcl:

http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2006/03/06/ruby-vs-tcl

[APN] My personal experience with Ruby is that it is indeed a fun language to program in as claimed. However, fun does not necessarily equate to productivity and I find Tcl much more productive without losing any of the fun part of it.

----

ruby-tcl apparently lets you create Tcl interpreters from within Ruby.  The author, Sam Stephenson, unveiled it at RubyConf 2008 during his talk, "Tcl for Rubyists", which you can watch at [http://www.bestechvideos.com/2008/12/08/rubyconf-2008-tcl-for-rubyists] (the demo begins around 40 mins 15 secs).  The code itself can be downloaded from [http://github.com/sstephenson/ruby-tcl/tree/master].

----
[iu2] A small comparison: Given the file data.txt that contains numbers "1 2 3 4..10". We want to sum the multiplications of pairs, that is, 1*2 + 3*4 + 5*6..., here are some snippets:

'''tcl'''
  set fid [open data.txt r]
  set txt [read $fid]
  close $fid

  set sum 0
  foreach {x y} $txt {
    incr sum [expr {$x * $y}]
  }
  puts $sum

'''python'''
  with file('data.txt') as f: txt = f.read()
  nums = map(int, txt.split())
  pairs = [nums[i:i+2] for i in range(0, len(nums), 2)]
  s = sum(x * y for x, y in pairs)
  print s

'''ruby'''
  sum = open('data.txt', 'r') {|f|
    f.read.split.map {|a| a.to_i}.each_slice(2).inject(0) {|sum, pair| sum + pair[0] * pair[1]}
  }
  puts sum

[Dec]  The Tcl, although I would code it slightly different, and Python snippets are quite readable, which to me is good coding style, the Ruby snippet... 

[Mirell] Whoever wrote that Ruby should be shot, and I think it's trying to be intentionally obtuse. 

'''ruby'''
  sum = 0
  IO.read("ruby-numbers").split.each_slice(2) {|a,b| sum = sum + a.to_i * b.to_i}
  puts sum

And done. Less lines than Tcl, and not as intentionally obtuse as the above example.

[DKF]: Putting lots of stuff on a line is good style in Ruby? I guess that's a style difference with Tcl; we tend to prefer to use more newlines, spreading our code out...

[makr] (2009-11-23): Yes, in other languages (e.g. [Java]) this kind of coding is called a ''Trainwreck''. Good coding practice as e.g. in The [Law of Demeter] should prevent this and ensures maintainability of the code. So it is ''not cool'' to say: ''See, I can do more in only one line than you could!'' but to say: ''See, I can still read and understand the code half a year after I wrote it!'' ...


[diam] [16/03/2010] I agree that fewer line doesn't mean better code!
But the ruby version of the tcl code above could be written more tcl like :

'''ruby (shortest yet readable)'''
  txt = File.read "data.txt"
  sum = 0
  txt.split.each_slice(2) do |a,b| 
      sum += a.to_i * b.to_i 
  end
  puts sum

----
[AM] (12 august 2009) I am not sure I understand the complete concept of code blocks well enough, but Tcl has
code blocks too:

    set block {puts $elem}
    foreach elem $list $block

is an - admittedly - primitive example. One awkward aspect of course is the use of a local variable 
in the block of code, but that can be taken care of:

    set block {puts $elem}
    foreach elem $list {apply {{elem block} {eval $block}} $elem $block}

or via:

    proc block {vars code} {
        foreach v $vars {upvar 1 $v $v} 
        eval $code
    }
    set block {puts $elem}
    foreach elem $list {block {elem} $block} 

[DKF]: Tcl doesn't bind variables at the block level, but rather at the level of the procedure (or lambda term) so instead we'll normally use the caller's context. It's a different way of doing things.

----

Rails-like (object-relational) web frameworks in Tcl:

   * [Woof!]
   * [Spindle]/Storm/storkCore
   * [ATWF]

<<categories>> Language | Object Orientation