What I wish a Ruby programmer had told me one year ago..

http://blog.sirupsen.dk/me/what-i-wish-a-ruby-programmer-had-told-me-one-year-ago/

by Sirupsen • 16 years ago

63 62 16 years ago

blog.sirupsen.dk

brazzy• 16 years ago

"Error establishing a database connection"? That's deep wisdom indeed...

Sirupsen8• 16 years ago

No idea what happened, trying to fix it currently.

augustl2• 16 years ago

Yes, Ruby doesn't scale.

Sirupsen8• 16 years ago

The blog is powered by Wordpress. :D

trebor• 16 years ago

Breaking out of a programming paradigm is difficult, but one of the most liberating things that you can do. Now when you go back to working on PHP projects you can approach it with different methods. The roughest time I had breaking my paradigm was when I learned a little Lisp...

dagheti• 16 years ago

If found working in a ML language like Haskell or F# puts a really tight straight-jacket on code style, and is wonderful at forcing you to adopt a new paradigm.

When you go back to coding in other languages, you approach the same problems in different ways because you were forced to solve them in a strongly typed functional manner.

silentbicycle3• 16 years ago

Yeah, and after you're comfortable with ML or Haskell, try Prolog. Unification+backtracking is like pattern matching cranked to 12. As a bonus, a lot of the corners of Erlang will suddenly make more sense, and several Prolog implementations come with good libraries for constraint programming.

Also, not to nitpick, but Haskell isn't an ML dialect, and while my experience is with OCaml (not SML or F#), OCaml doesn't force you to do anything in a purely functional manner the way Haskell does - it just makes it an option. (I think this is a good thing, but I guess it's a downside when you're trying to force yourself to try new stuff.)

Sirupsen8• 16 years ago

Very sorry about the downtime, wasn't expecting such a rape.

Sirupsen8• 16 years ago

Aaand.. it's up!

augustl2• 16 years ago

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

The post in Google's cache, while the site is down.

hvs3• 16 years ago

This is what I've come to expect from articles about Ruby:

  And of course point them towards Linux:

  “Windows is not the best development platform in the 
  world for Ruby. I recommend you to try out Linux. Start
  with a simple distribution, like Ubuntu. And then I
  recommend something like Arch Linux whenever you feel 
  like you are ready for something more advanced!”

Really? In an article about Ruby you feel the need to point people at your personal pet OS? Pointless.

Mc_Big_G• 16 years ago

It's not pointless at all. Trying to develop in Ruby or Rails on Windows in a huge pain in the ass. I know, I did it for a year or so. He could have recommended OS X, but the price is a barrier to entry.

rubinelli2• 16 years ago

I think the biggest problem is the number of gems with native libraries. I switched to JRuby, and felt a lot less pain. Now if only it had a faster startup...

dpritchett• 16 years ago

Ubuntu on Virtualbox is my preferred method of trying out new languages without worrying about my Windows install holding me back. I blogged a HOWTO on that back in December.

The improved flash performance of Ubuntu 10.04 will hopefully be enough to keep me out of Windows entirely from here on.

hvs3• 16 years ago

But "Arch Linux"? Come on. Was that really necessary to push?

dbaugh• 16 years ago

Rails development on OS X is so nice if you use things like MacPorts and Passenger. Coupled with TextMate I would not want to Rails dev on anything else.

Sirupsen8• 16 years ago

I'm sorry if you feel like I point them towards my "pet OS". I should have stated more clearly there are other alternatives, and this only is my opinion.

blacksmythe• 16 years ago

What advantages does Arch Linux have over Ubuntu?

hvs3• 16 years ago

What does Arch Linux have to do with developing Ruby?

njharman• 16 years ago

> After a few days playing around with Python, I felt okay with it. I didn’t love Python,

Probably should try longer than a few days, but this is the best/only metric for personal programming language (business/group programming may impose other metrics).

If you don't love the language you're programming with, you should find another.

nearestneighbor6• 16 years ago

> If you don't love the language you're programming with, you should find another.

It's the other way around. If you love a language, you are probably unaware of its flaws or of other languages (It's like the stupidity-confidence correlation). This is one of the reasons fanboys make me want to puke.

msie• 16 years ago

So you should stick with a language you sorta like? Wouldn't that lead to less mastery of the language and the same result (unawareness of its flaws)?

silentbicycle3• 16 years ago

Well, if you love a language enough, you'll eventually be dragged through all of its weak areas and get real perspective.

The important thing is just to keep quiet during the "best thing EVER!!!" phase. The reason fanboys are so annoying is the combination of enthusiasm and relatively shallow knowledge.

butterfi3• 16 years ago

Grammer cop says no.

Honestly, your choice of words is distracting. Your server got "raped"? PHP is "evil?"

What, no Nazis?

I'm not sure why this post is getting votes...

ulvund• 16 years ago

Give him a break .. English is not his first language

_pius• 16 years ago

Honestly though, the "rape" thing was pretty offputting to me. Completely gratuitous and not at all clever.

nonrecursive• 16 years ago

Was "grammar" intentionally misspelled?

epochwolf• 16 years ago

I would assume so. I have a wallpaper with "My Grammer is Gooder" on it. It seems to be one of those memes.

butterfi3• 16 years ago

it wasn't... how funny is that!

Maybe I was translating from my native language.

Semiapies• 16 years ago

It's a rule - you have to typo when criticizing someone's grammar.

nearestneighbor6• 16 years ago

> And then I recommend something like Arch Linux whenever you feel like you are ready for something more advanced!

What's so great about Arch? Why should I waste my time getting the basic functionality working, like X or audio?

compay• 16 years ago

I use Arch but I wouldn't necessarily take the author's advice. If you enjoy tinkering and want to learn more about administering a linux machine, Arch is great.

But if you want things to "just work" then Ubuntu is also great.

abentspoon• 16 years ago

Less magic. Ubuntu is a complex system, and hard for a beginner to learn and customize. However, there's no need to switch while you're happy with Ubuntu.

koenigdavidmj• 16 years ago

Agree. I'm a Slackware user because too many times has Ubuntu booted and showed me a dialog box saying "I updated your system and broke everything; have fun fixing it".

If I wanted something that constantly breaks things and then try to get off by looking cute, I'd get a puppy.

EDIT: s/Slackware/& user/

Sirupsen8• 16 years ago

To learn.

nearestneighbor6• 16 years ago

> To learn.

Learn what? How to get the basic functionality working? So that when when you are installing Arch, you would know how to do it? Sounds perfectly reasonable, I guess.

P.S. I've been using Linux since the '90s. Configured X, etc. a bunch of times. You know what I've learned? That it's stupid when the computer can't do it for you. Not all "learning" is created equal.

johkra• 16 years ago

For me, there are three main reasons:

  * Customizability. It's very easy to build a system just the way I want it.  
  * Rolling release. There are no releases every six months, but when a new version of a software is released, I get it after a short testing period.  
  * Package availability. Everything I need is either in the repositories or easily buildable from AUR. (Using simple recipes called PKGBUILDs).

BUT: This is only great, if you know your way around Linux - I can install and configure Arch in less than 2 hours, but my notebook for instance uses the same install for about 2 years now. The good wiki helps to gain this knowledge, but it's still very unfamiliar for most people.

steveklabnik• 16 years ago

I enjoy using Arch because it puts me in total control of what's on the system. Also, X and audio really take just a few minutes to set up.

noxn3• 16 years ago

I bet if this post was about python and not ruby (and maybe leave the Arch Linux part, as people didn't seem to like that), there wouldn't be anyone calling him a fanboi.

Macha2• 16 years ago

Nah, attacks happen. It is the internet after all. Post a highly subjective post in favour of anything, and you'll find someone to disagree loudly with you.

noxn3• 16 years ago

Probably. I still have the feeling that it wouldn't get this much bad comments in a python entry.

noxn3• 16 years ago

Yay bad karma!

nearestneighbor6• 16 years ago

tl;dr: PHP noob discovers Ruby and OOP. Thinks he's now so awesome that people care about his opinion about unrelated topics like Linux distros.

jorgecastillo• 16 years ago

It's kind of disappointing to see the hate some HN readers express toward non mainstream Linux distros like Arch. As some readers have pointed out this sort of Linux distros are not for everyone. We can use whatever OS we like for whatever reasons we choose and there is no reason to get angry or offensive about it.

P.S. I use OpenBSD.

owyn• 16 years ago

i think that's a new record. flame war from the first post.

What I wish a Ruby programmer had told me one year ago..

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