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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?..."
Why devote so much energy into implementing a mediocre system using ruby, of all languages, when you could spend time improving an existing system?
How do you know it's mediocre? Have you tried it?
Do you even understand what it does?
Total waste of time...99.99% of the code out there is written in C -based languages (java, php, C++) for a reason...
You could be the one that's totally wasting your time. One should choose the right language for the job at hand.
I recently inherited a project which took six months to develop in C++. It weighed in at ~4800 lines of C++ code. Since we needed to significantly expand the scope of the project and also add a GUI _and_ since execution speed wasn't an issue, but development time _was_ an issue I decided to rewrite the code in Ruby. It took a week and came to ~1200 lines of Ruby. The resulting Ruby code is much more flexible and easier to modify and add to than the previous C++ codebase (good riddance to it). I'll gain back that week invested to do the conversion several times over as the project progresses and as the requirements (inevitably) change... and I'll keep my sanity.
Choose the right tool for the job. If speed of execution is an issue then by all means use C/C++ (I do). However, if you need to develop code quickly then use an agile (aka scripting) language - I prefer Ruby for that role.