in reply to Score: Perl 1, Ruby 0

I decided to stretch my brain this semester by doing all the programming and scratchwork for the course I'm taking in Ruby.

My main disappointments in Ruby so far have been the lack of autovivification in multi-dimensional arrays (doing dynamic programming without it is a PITA) and the available documentation not meeting my expectations.

I've subscribed to the "Ruby" tag in del.icio.us, but the S/N is swamped by Rails hype. Ruby does make me appreciate the "Huffman coding" of Perl. Haven't bothered with threads so far as they're not necessary to the problem domain.

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Re^2: Score: Perl 1, Ruby 0
by adrianh (Chancellor) on Feb 22, 2006 at 13:20 UTC
    My main disappointments in Ruby so far have been the lack of autovivification in multi-dimensional arrays (doing dynamic programming without it is a PITA)

    Curiously not something I've ever had problems with. I guess I've wrapped stuff up in an object before I need multiple levels of indirection so the autovivification stuff never hits me.

    and the available documentation not meeting my expectations.

    Buy the Pickaxe book. It's well worth the money.

    Ruby does make me appreciate the "Huffman coding" of Perl.

    I think that this depends on what you're doing. I'm finding my Ruby tends to be more concise than my Perl 5.

    (Happily using Ruby in the real world :-)

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      and the available documentation not meeting my expectations.
      Buy the Pickaxe book. It's well worth the money.

      I spent some time using Ruby last year. Bought the Pickaxe too. Ruby is definitely a nice language, but it's problem is not just that it's lacking in docs, but that it's lacking in commitment to docs. The Pickaxe is a pretty good book, granted. But I got the impression that the core Ruby people just aren't all that committed to making sure they have great docs. It's just not a priority for them, and that's fine -- that's their choice. And it's understood that they've got a lot on their plate.

      After spending a few months with Ruby, then coming back to Perl, one of the first things I immediately noticed was, "Wow, I almost forgot how darn *good* the Perl docs are." (the other thing I said to myself was, "Wow, I almost forgot how *vast* the CPAN is" -- but that's is beside the point, since Ruby is still young).

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