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Rubyx OS - A Testament To The Power Of Ruby
Andrew Walrond writes "Rubyx the OS is created from source by rubyx the ruby script. Got it? The same small ruby script handles all subsequent package management, customised parallel and distributed user-mode package builds, and can create a live CD. For good measure, Rubyx (the os) sports an all new init and rationalised service management system written in ....can you guess?..."
FYI, there's another initiative to develop a fully Ruby-based operating system (including the kernel), though one wonder when -- if ever -- this project will deliver something usable.
I'm not too sure how this isn't 'Rubyx, the Linux distribution with an installer/package manager written in Ruby'. If it had been written in any other language, would it still be cool?
I use Python mostly for "work", but I much prefer Ruby and try to use it whenever possible.
If you are a theoretical guy who loves a conceptually elegant and consistent language like Smalltalk or Scheme, you'll love Ruby. Ruby is so consistent, it's really lovely.
If you're more practical and need good documentation and extensive libraries, you'll probably be annoyed by it.
If you like to write programs FAST but not sacrifice readability like Perl, you'll really love Ruby. For instance in Ruby, you don't have to type "self" in method argument lists the way you do in Python. Ruby is 100% object oriented inside and out. Classes are first class objects, subclasses of Module objects. There are no "old style classes" or "new style classes", no cruft held over from previous versions of the language.
In Python, you have built-ins like "str()" which can call the __str__() method on an object. None of that kind of repetition in Ruby. Just call obj.str (or actually, obj.to_s) directly. You don't need the parens in that case.
Ruby has "blocks" which are a nice syntactic sugar for a whole class of operations. For instance a database transaction can be implemented as a block:
transaction { |t|
do stuff with t
more stuff
}
in Python that would be:
t = start_transaction()
try:
do stuff with t
more stuff
finally:
end_transaction()
The ruby version is easier to read.
If you want a large selection of tools and implementations, well, Ruby doesn't have too many like Python.
Also the Ruby community is still small and friendly. The python community is turning into the Perl community, in my opinion. A little arrogant.
Python is starting to look more and more like Ruby every revision though.
At first glance, I thought this would be similar to Cleese, a Python-based operating system, but it isn't: RubyX is a distro with some stuff written in Ruby, and Cleese is an actual effort to write a kernel in Python. Not that it's progressing a lot, though... the CVS tree can be found here.