+ Reply to Thread
Results 1 to 6 of 6

Thread: Ruby     submit to reddit submit to twitter

  1. #1
    Campaign
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Posts
    6,995
    BG Level
    8
    FFXI Server
    Sylph

    Ruby

    After much deliberation and some experimenting with Java, .js, .xml, bash scripting and some other odds and ends, I've decided that I'm going to make Ruby the first programming language I dive head in on.

    Has anyone taken this particular train ride before and have any helpful tips?

    TJ

  2. #2

    Quote Originally Posted by Buffy View Post
    After much deliberation and some experimenting with Java, .js, .xml, bash scripting and some other odds and ends, I've decided that I'm going to make Ruby the first programming language I dive head in on.

    Has anyone taken this particular train ride before and have any helpful tips?

    TJ
    Choose something else. Sorry, not trying to be unhelpful, but Ruby is kinda at the tail end of its utility as a marketable skill. If you want to dive into something I'd reconsider unless you have a very specific desire for Ruby(like you work at a company where they still use it).

    Ruby's popularity was always tied to rails, and now that people don't make rails apps(as a generalization), the language and ecosystem is losing relevance quickly; since there's other options that accomplish the same goals as Ruby, but without any of the massive performance/scaling issues of most RoR apps.

    That said, in an attempt to be helpful I strongly advise new students to use Udemy as a resource, $10-$30 for a course is a steal for the quality of the highly rated ones, and gives you good visuals as well as a "professor" to actually ask questions; highly recommend you consider this over a traditional "book".

    Ultimately if Ruby is the thing you'll stick to, coding in anything is better than nothing in terms of learning; so do take my advice with a pinch of salt.

  3. #3
    Very Sexy Nerd
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Posts
    9,055
    BG Level
    8
    FFXI Server
    Carbuncle

    Ruby is awesome.

    All I use it is for random scripts and scrapers though. ):

    (I can't believe I'm saying this, but you are probably better off learning python instead.)

  4. #4
    BG Content
    Join Date
    Jul 2007
    Posts
    21,105
    BG Level
    10
    FFXI Server
    Lakshmi
    Blog Entries
    1

    Has Python largely won the general purpose scripting language wars?

    I'm pushing myself into data science and everyone wants you to know either Python or R (for big data analysis/statistics). However, R is an idiosyncratic language made by statisticians so I can't imagine that sees wider adoption.

    I can't think of where PERL is used anymore.
    Ruby is dying out.
    MATLAB is used for matrix math.
    PHP is still the language du jour for accessing relational databases.
    Lua is used for lightweight scripting, although I mostly see it in older opensource projects.
    Javascript is being used for browser-friendly lightweight scripting.

    I see Python in pretty much every domain, though.

  5. #5

    Only time I've ever seriously used Ruby was when I was futzing around with RPGMaker.

    And, really, anything Ruby can do, Python can do better.

    Python is, imo, the best gateway for scripting. But if you're using it for game building, I recommend C# and using a proper engine like Unity. C# has way more application.

  6. #6

    Python more or less is a big player in the general purpose scripting language wars(though I'd argue javascript is the actual winner); I'd argue its more part of an industry wide trend away from scripting languages and just building those tools in newer high level high performance languages(scala, clojure, elixir, nim, swift, et all). In the modern language landscape there just isn't a need to trade performance for syntactic sugar like when Ruby, Python, etc originated and were popular; you can have both now.

    I think even Python is a dead man walking at this point, it just happened to gain popularity in the scientific community as a historical coincidence; which will keep it relevant for a lot longer. I kinda hate using Python for a lot of ML related projects, the whole ecosystem is like this barely functional wrapper over C/C++; I'd rather just use that directly most the time just for consistency.

Similar Threads

  1. Python & Ruby issue
    By Meresgi in forum Tech
    Replies: 10
    Last Post: 2014-02-27, 16:47