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Domain: rubyist.net

Stories and comments across the archive that link to rubyist.net.

Comments · 10

  1. Re:Improved multi-byte support? by VGPowerlord · · Score: 1 · on Ruby On Rails 1.2 Released
    No, they're not. UCS-2 and UTF-32 are fixed width encodings, not multi-byte.

    UCS-2 was a bad example, as it has been phased out in favor of UTF-16.

    The technical introduction to Unicode states "The Unicode Standard defines three encoding forms that allow the same data to be transmitted in a byte, word or double word oriented format (i.e. in 8, 16 or 32-bits per code unit)."

    You'll notice that only the first is listed as byte? That's because a word as they have defined it is two bytes long. Two bytes is, of course, more than one byte, thus the term "multi-byte." The UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32 & BOM FAQ has a nice table with the minimum and maximum bytes/character that each encoding takes.

    (For reference, the Unicode standard refers to the full size of a character as a "code unit" or "code value," rather than a byte.)

    And if UTF-8 is not eventually supported natively by Ruby, then the Rails implementation will still be needed. The rest of the internet is not going to drop UTF-8 just because Ruby does not support it.

    This slide, from a presentation given by the Ruby's author, Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, indicates upcoming support for UTF-8.
  2. Re:Mod_python has easier syntax by richieb · · Score: 4, Informative · on Ruby on Rails 1.0 Released
    It's hard to get excited about any tool based on Ruby because it inherits so much confusing syntax from Perl.

    Where did you get this impression? Maybe because you saw some regular expressions in Ruby? Ruby syntax is much, much clearer than Perl.

    Take a look here

  3. Interactive Ruby Shell by Beautyon · · Score: 3, Interesting · on A Guided Tour of the Microsoft Command Shell

    It looks just like eval.rb the interactive ruby shell:

    http://www.rubyist.net/~slagell/ruby/strings.html

  4. Re:Perl's place in todays world? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on The Perl Foundation Gets New Leadership

    Ruby has mixins in lieue of multiple inheritance and traded one set of problems for another (trait composition seems to offer the best of both worlds but it hasn't caught on yet).

    Haha, funny you mention traits. At RubyConf (which was this past weekend), matz showed off some new ideas for Ruby 2.0. http://www.rubyist.net/~matz/slides/rc2005/mgp0002 7.html

    The full slides from matz's keynote: http://www.rubyist.net/~matz/slides/rc2005/

  5. Re:Perl's place in todays world? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on The Perl Foundation Gets New Leadership

    Ruby has mixins in lieue of multiple inheritance and traded one set of problems for another (trait composition seems to offer the best of both worlds but it hasn't caught on yet).

    Haha, funny you mention traits. At RubyConf (which was this past weekend), matz showed off some new ideas for Ruby 2.0. http://www.rubyist.net/~matz/slides/rc2005/mgp0002 7.html

    The full slides from matz's keynote: http://www.rubyist.net/~matz/slides/rc2005/

  6. Re:Rubyx... and Ruby itself by Tarantolato · · Score: 5, Interesting · on Slashback: Civilians, Rubyx, Restrictions

    Depends on if you mean the interpreter and standard libraries or the source code you produce.

    For the source code, you can often get quite small while still being readable. Ruby's designer, Matz, takes things like aesthetics, intuitiveness and liveable design more seriously than most language designers. Whether it succeeds or not is a personal judgement call. It leads to some useful things being excluded from the standard base because they are deemed "not the Ruby Way", but also to a tool base that is (in the estimation of fans) very clean, useful and fun to use.

    You can read about the ideas behind Ruby here in a presentation by Matz called "How Ruby Sucks". Also an extended Python/Ruby comparison here.

    Basically if you want to see what Perl would look like if it was created by a crazy Japanese guy with a peculiar philosophy of programming instead of a crazy American guy with a peculiar philosophy of programming, take a look at Ruby.

  7. Re:Why would I want to convert from Ruby to Python by Daleks · · Score: 2, Interesting · on Python Conference Coming Soon

    Ruby2 will have Unicode support. Read this.

  8. Re:That's not what we mean by clean, friend. by xteddy · · Score: 2, Informative · on Ruby 1.8.0 Released
    Clean syntax is not an end in itself. It's good for compiler writers because it's easier for them to parse the language. LISP and Brainfuck have a very clean and minimal syntax but the programmers have to pay a price. Ruby was not intended to be a minimal, clean language (like many academic languages are) but was designed to help programmers write better programmes and make them better programmers at the same time.

    Matz held a talk on his intentions at OSCON (and it's fun to read) named

    The Power and Philosophy of Ruby or How to create Babel-17.

  9. Flame His Content by Vagary · · Score: 1 · on State of the Onion 7

    I grew up in BC, so I have no problem with Engrish. Instead I'd like to take a moment to flame his content:

    • "Japanese has so many characters...great invention" - There is significant evidence suggesting that phonetic alphabets (such as Hiragana) are easier to learn and extend.
    • "Every conversation is...stored in my brain in Japanese" - I could go into what Wittgenstein would say about that, but instead I'll just assert that conversations are not stored in plain-text, they're compressed. That's why you remember the gist long after the specific phrasing is gone.
    • "Language influence[s] human thought" - The Strong Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis has been largely discredited.
    • "If you are a machine...you can talk to [machines] directly" - No, you need an interchange format. I assert that programming languages are a low-bandwidth method for communicating between brain-machines and computer-machines.

    It's actually a pretty good talk. Of particular amusement is his explanation (on slide 55) of why Ruby prefixes global identifiers with dollar signs.

  10. The State of the... by freeBill · · Score: 3, Informative · on State of the Onion 7

    ...Onion was good, but to hear it you had to sit through five other "State of" speeches which were terminally boring. (Well, the "State of the Snake" wasn't boring, but its schizotypic references to the "Pythonic way" of doing things went a long way toward explaining why the Python community is so paranoid.)

    A hidden gem appeared later in the week when Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto gave his "State of the Corundum" speech. (Actually it wasn't called that. It was called "The Power and Philosophy of Ruby.") The subtitle alone ("how to create babel-17") had the packed room buzzing before he started: "He's going to turn us into uber-assassins with no sense of self!"

    The slides are available online (link above) and are definitely worth taking a look at. He's kinda sensitive about his English, so don't flame him unless your Japanese is better. Matz's philosophy is also guided by this maxim: "Be humble, be minor, be happy."