The Prejudgement of Programming Languages¶
Author¶
- Gary Bernhardt (http://twitter.com/garybernhardt)
Intro¶
10 Years of Failures and Bad Ideas
Pre-2001: Ignorant of Software
~2001: C is the best thing, Java sucks
~2003: Learned Lisp
Designed a “more modern” C
Had curly braces, static types, but basically Python
~2006 Built BitBacker in ~98% Python
Arc: C -> Lisp -> Python
~2009: Ruby and Python 50/50
Tweet about frustration of integrating libraries in Ruby + Javascript
Frustrated by Python’s lack of blocks
Shows a conversation between _why and Ryan
“Ruby isn’t serious”
Frustrated with programming
q2 2010: Writing Tests
- Show TDD using Ruby
- Crazy Vim action
Testing¶
- Claim: RSpec is confusing
- Never had this problem
- Python based on SUnit from 1994
- Thought Django views are not as advanced as Rails
- Ruby is the serious one?
- “A Python programmer rejects a new idea without considering its value. A Ruby programmer accepts a new idea without considering its value.”
Choose Ruby or Python¶
Ruby community more willing to pay
Move to that full time
- Shows examples of ugliness in Ruby
- @foo ||= bar
- realization, it’s how you do memoization
Maybe Ruby is well designed?
Generators, Comprehensions, Decorators, and Context Managers are easy to implement with blocks
Which language is complicated?
Emprically¶
- Realized back to ignorance
- Judged languages before he should
- Ruby’s community is serious about testing
- Rare opportunity to work with both