The Power of Ruby
Posted by Ben Thu, 19 Oct 2006 07:01:15 GMT
Here’s my very incomplete notes of Matz’s presentation at the BYU CS Department. I stopped taking notes toward the end. I hope they post pdfs of the slides he used.
It looked like they were recording the presentation, so maybe we’ll get video.
Matz 18 October 2006
So many languages: 4000 years ago (Babel)
“It is the source of my suffer.” but we can compare languages.
English v Japanese:
- totally different syntax
- rich ways to express respect
- thousands of characters
- need no icons
Purpose of Languages:
- describe facts
- express thoughts/feeling
- think in
Languages are not only tools to communicate, but also tools to think.
Language determines the way we think. It influences human thoughts more than we think.
So, does this rule apply to programming languages?
Since we think in programming languages, the programming language must have influence on our thoughts.
What is a good language?
- helps human thought
- makes the programming experience better
“Ruby doesn’t focus on run-time efficiency at all” “Ruby focuses on cost of programming, programmer productivity.”
Ruby has an easy to remember syntax, and looks like other programming languages (familiar).
Ruby = Smalltalk – Unfamiliar syntax + perl’s scripting power + python’s exception etc. + CLU’s iterator + a lot more good things
Pure OOPL
Matz created ruby so that programming would be fun. Usability is the focus.
“Easy things should be easy. Hard things Should be possible.”
