TITLE: Ruby Friday
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: September 23, 2005  7:26 PM
DESC: After writing about Scheme, I will now give you some Ruby pointers, two of which are fun and two of which are educational.
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BODY:
I have written about Scheme my last two times out,
so I figured I should give some love to another
of my favorite languages.

Like many folks these days, I am a big fan of Ruby.
I took a Ruby tutorial at OOPSLA several years ago
from Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt, author of the
already-classic
<A HREF="http://www.rubycentral.com/book/">
   Programming Ruby</A>.
At the time, the only Ruby interpreter I could find
for Mac OS 9 was a port written by a Japanese
programmer, almost of whose documentation was written
in, you guessed, Japanese.  But I made it run and
learned how to be functional in Ruby within a few hours.
That told me something about the language.

(Recalling these tutorial reminds me of two things.
One, Dave and Andy give a great tutorial.  If you
get the chance, learn from them in person.  The same
can be sai for many
<A HREF="http://www.oopsla.org/2005/ShowEvent.do?id=811">
   OOPSLA tutorials</A>.
Two, thank you, Apple, for OS X as a Unix -- and for
shipping it with such a nice collction of programming
tools.)

<LI> If you want to augment the Pragmatic Programmers'
guide to Ruby, check out
<A HREF="http://www.poignantguide.net/ruby/">
   Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby</A>.
You can learn Ruby there, plus quite a bit on
programming more generally.  You could have some fun,
too.

<LI> Unlike many dynamic language fans, I like Java
just fine.  I can enjoy programming in Java, but there
is no question that it gets in my way more than a
language like Scheme or Ruby.

Still, I feel compelled to share this opportunity to
improve your geekware collection:

<CENTER>
<IMG SRC="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog-images/misc/java-rehab.jpg"
     ALT="Java Rehabilitation Clinic"
     WIDTH="150">
</CENTER>

Thanks to the magic of CafePress.com, you can buy
a variety of merchandise in the
<A HREF="http://www.cafepress.com/javarehab">
   Java Rehab</A>
line.  But why?

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
Java coding need not be a life-long debilitation.
With the proper treatment, and a copy of Programming
Ruby, you can return to a life of happy, productive
software development. 

<P> So, give yourself over to a higher power!  Learn
Ruby...
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Just imagine how much more fun Java would be if it
gave itself over to the higher power of higher-order
procedures...

<LI> Finally, a little Ruby on Ruby.  Check out Sam
Ruby's talk,
<A HREF="http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2005/09/09/The-Case-for-Dynamic-Languages">
   The Case for Dynamic Languages</A>.
Sam uses Ruby to illustrate his argument that the
distinction between system languages and scripting
languages is slowly shrinking, as the languages we
use everyday become more dynamic.  Along the way,
he shows the power of several ideas that have
entered mainstream programming parlance only in the
last decade, among them closures and higher-order
procedures in the form of blocks.

But my favorite part of Sam's talk is his sub-title:

<BLOCKQUOTE><STRONG>
Reinventing Smalltalk, one decade at a time
</STRONG></BLOCKQUOTE>

<A HREF="http://www.paulgraham.com/">
   Paul Graham</A>
says that we are reinventing Lisp, and he has a strong
case.  With either language as a target, the lives of
programmers can only get better.  The real question
is whether objects as abstractions ultimately displace
functions as the starting level of abstraction for the
program.  Another question, perhaps more important,
is whether the language-as-environment can ever displace
the minimalism of the scripting language as the programmer's
preferred habitat.  I have a hunch that the answer to
both questions will be the same.
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