September 17, 2007 – 10:07 pm
In part one I started talking about a few differences between Ruby and Perl. Let’s continue with a few other topics I think are key to understanding both of these languages.
Object-Oriented programming
Most everyone these days does it, though some will argue what “it” really is. There are clear benefits, regardless of the specifics of your definition, and the vast majority of modern languages support writing Object Oriented code in one form or another. Ruby, as with a few other languages (notably, Python), takes OO to the extreme — everything is an object. Even the most simple code contains objects. Care to guess how many objects this line contains?
['a', '2', 'Z'].join(',')
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September 11, 2007 – 12:12 pm
I found this charting tool on Technorati today and thought it was an interesting way to quantify the buzz surrounding different keywords. For fun I’ve included a few charts here, comparing Perl and Ruby. It will be interesting to see how these change over time.
Blog posts in English per day over the past 30 days
Observations
At the time of this post, there is a slight difference in scale between the Perl and Ruby charts — Ruby averages just a bit more than what Perl manages. Keep in mind this is only counting blog postings, so things like IRC and mailing list traffic are left out. There are other factors, too, such as the possibility that Ruby programmers are simply more vocal or more likely to have a blog.
Also note the marked increase in Perl posts around August 11th as Kirrily Robert pointed out in the comments. Also thanks to Kirrily for recommending a change to the keywords to include “programming”.
And as a final note, I’m not sure how reliable this information is. The chart seems to occasionally be missing some information, such as a section of time with no data. So ignore that if it comes up.
Take action!
The take-away of all of this, I suppose, is that we should be are being more vocal. Perl is an excellent and powerful programming language with a huge base of users. And did I mention we get CPAN and Catalyst? So get to Good work, Perl users — spread the word!
September 8, 2007 – 10:27 pm
We had the distinct pleasure this past Friday at our monthly Perl Mongers meeting of having Jonathan Rockway present an introduction to the Catalyst web application framework. It was great to have one of our neighbors from the windy city make the journey up to Grand Rapids — many thanks, Jonathan.
For those who haven’t heard of Catalyst, I highly recommend taking a look. Just please don’t call it Rails for Perl. That would be selling it far too short.
One of the things that I love about Perl, and I know I’m not alone, is the flexibility of the language and supporting libraries (TIMTOWTDI, see CPAN). That same flexibility is also quite intentionally found in the Catalyst framework. Don’t like Template::Toolkit? No problem! Pick another like, Template::Declare, HTML::Template, Mason, or write your own. Don’t want to use one of the available ORMs? Fine, use Catalyst::Model::DBI and just write your SQL. You don’t even have to use a database if you don’t want to — see Catalyst::Model::SVN, Catalyst::Model::JabberRPC, and Angerwhale for examples. Talk about possibilities!
So take a look, you owe it to yourself. Install it, put it through its paces, and spread the word!
September 3, 2007 – 12:03 pm
September 1, 2007 – 12:01 am
I have been involved with web software development for a few years now. Early on I learned the value of the web as a resource and spent plenty of time searching through documentation, articles, and blog posts, studying the methods others have used to deliver successful web applications. Certain practices and tools have stood out as I’ve taken in information on topics ranging from testing and web frameworks to proper HTML and CSS. One particular voice has been difficult to ignore: Ruby and its web development framework, Rails.
Always curious, I have worked through several of the more popular video and written tutorials that are prevalent online. I find them interesting, full of promise, and yet I feel they don’t give me the real picture of either Ruby or Rails. Sure, it’s cool that you can write your own trivial blog application in about 10 minutes, but I don’t write trivial software. Nobody cares about trivial software.
On the other hand I see respectable software developers using Ruby and Rails, so there must be more to it than what the typical tutorial shows. So, over the past few months I have been slowly digging into Ruby, working to really learn the language and not just the Rails framework. I want to see the whole picture of how to solve real, complicated problems using Ruby, and eventually Rails, and answer a few questions I have. Is it maintainable? Testable? Scalable? How does it compare to Perl? Would I enjoy programming in Ruby as much as I have enjoyed Perl? Layed out before you is part one: the beginning of my journey.
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