Unholy: _why's Ruby to Python compiler

by DanielRibeiro • 15 years ago

130 54 15 years ago

moron4hire• 15 years ago

_why was infinitely pragmatic. He serves as a constant, near daily inspiration to me, just because he programmed because he wanted to, because he loved it, not because it was his career.

irfn• 15 years ago

_why is indeed an inspiration to all of us. i always make sure that i point out "Poignant Guide to Ruby" and other _why's brilliance to ruby newbies.

netghost• 15 years ago

I think he may have been so whimsical that he popped out the other side of reality into the pragmatic.

keyle• 15 years ago

Is there any reason as to why this resurfaces from 2008? No pun intended.

bootload• 15 years ago

"... any reason as to why this resurfaces from 2008? ..."

A practical reason: Ruby doesn't have the depth of Python libraries, get more done in less time.[0] A theoretical reason: reading through the docs you find that 'decompyle' is based on 'spark' (John Aycock's generic small languages compiler), learning new things about languages & compilers is good. A philosophical reason: studying _whys' code is like finding some lost Greek classic from the library of Alexandria. Worthy of reading, just to see how a hacker works this problem, thus making it timeless.

[0] At the time the code was written.

SlyShy2• 15 years ago

Sadly, this can't handle C extensions in either language, making it unable to port a lot of major libraries. Fun to play around with, though.

rbanffy9• 15 years ago

In his comments, he says Ruby and Python programmers "battle" a lot. I love and use Python a lot and have a small dislike for Ruby's very irregular syntax, but nothing worth fighting for.

But don't get me started on Java... ;-)

chadcf• 15 years ago

Heh, and I use Ruby a lot and find Python's syntax troublesome :) I do like the idea that we can all unite behind hatred of Java however. Although Groovy at least is a step up and would be my choice if I ever had to program Java under threat of death or dismemberment.

Also I'd highly recommend the movie Python from 2000, starring none other than Wil Wheaton trying to defend the small town of Ruby from an attack by a giant Python.

itsnotvalid• 15 years ago

Last time I tried Groovy I found that the speed of it is really the pain of using it. It was considerably slower than plain Java.

I'd recommend Scala even if you skip all the functional parts of it (Clojure's too un-java to speak as an alternative.)

kotrin• 15 years ago

Why not just use JRuby over Groovy?

rufugee• 15 years ago

Sheesh. Listen, I'm a rubyist as much as anyone and have a number of commercial ruby/rails projects under my belt, but I've also done Java for more than a decade. This willingness by rubyists to piss on Java is quite silly. Java as a language can be frustrating at times, but it's really not that bad and the platform itself is solid. I manage a number of applications in Java which would be an absolute nightmare to write in ruby, simply because of their complexity and size. In large systems, Java excels.

SlyShy2• 15 years ago

I wrote a parser once that translated Ruby code using Python syntax convention into Ruby. It felt like it was basically Python, without explicit self method parameters. But I'm sure everything was horribly un-Pythonic.

bpodgursky• 15 years ago

Java has a very regular syntax, albeit a verbose one... but I guess the last part about Java was for different reasons.

chc2• 15 years ago

I don't know how long you've been doing Python and Ruby, but when Why wrote that, the relationship between Rubyists and Pythonistas was pretty chilly.

As I saw it: There was this feeling that, after years of being dismissed as a mere scripting language, it was Python's time to shine — but then Ruby came along and (pushed along by Rails) was about to steal Python's thunder, and they were so similar that people thought there was only room for one such language in the New World Order. So Pythonistas began acting pretty rude toward the upstart Rubyists, and the Rubyists got this idea that Python was an evil, enemy technology.

robbles• 15 years ago

Do you have an example of this? I've always seen it as the other way round - Rubyists dismissing Python along with PHP and Java as old/irrelevant/less powerful.

But the whole thing is pointless anyway. Everyone should learn at least a little of both languages since they're both fantastic.

alinajaf• 15 years ago

Perhaps I don't participate in the mailing lists and message boards where these battles were fought, but the only python/ruby users I've met in real life have always been pretty neutral towards the other language, at least acknowledging that it's better than the alternatives (PHP, Java etc).

extension• 15 years ago

There is a stark ideological contrast between the Ruby and Python communities with regard to code uniformity. Pythonistas believe there should be only one obvious way to do things. Rubyists, on the other hand, are more accepting of personal style in code, probably having gleaned some of the individualism from Perl culture.

jonhohle• 15 years ago

> and they were so similar that people thought there was only room for one such language in the New World Order.

I hear this said a lot, but where does this idea come from? Their object models are different, their syntax is different, their goals are different.

Admittedly, I haven't written much Python (my experience is mostly reading it), but that's primarily because I preferred Ruby and have never seen what Python brings to the table.

regularfry3• 15 years ago

Python's syntax has some irritating holes in it too. Why, for instance, do class methods rely on annotations? Why not take advantage of the explicit self? It's almost like there's a blessed core to Python's syntax that crystalised in about 2000, and nothing since then has been allowed to infringe on it.

Ingaz2• 15 years ago

>> Why, for instance, do class methods rely on annotations?

Python do not have annotations. Decorators are not like java annotations.

>>Why not take advantage of the explicit self?

I think "self" is good. Python lets you bloody patch python objects and classes in runtime and "self" makes it more clear.

Something like:

class MyClass(object): pass

def setX(self,x): self.x = x

MyClass.setX = setX

mc = MyClass()

mc.getX = lambda self: self.x

(INB4: I do not think that bloody patching is good practice)

amix• 15 years ago

Freud's Narcissism of small differences 1): the phenomenon that it is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and ridiculing each other.

This theory applies to some other conflicts such as Hells Angels vs. Bandidos, Emacs vs. Vim, Sunni muslims vs. Shia muslims, Christians vs. Protestants etc.

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences

sbarre• 15 years ago

Uhh no your examples aren't about "small differences" they're about power struggles. Not the same thing. :-)

sp332• 15 years ago

Old joke (which you might well believe if you've heard Protestants talking amongst themselves/ourselves):

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said, "Stop! Don't do it!" "Why shouldn't I?" he said. I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!" He said, "Like what?" I said, "Well, are you religious or atheist?" He said, "Religious." I said, "Me too! Are your Christian or Buddhist?" He said, "Christian." I said, "Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?" He said, "Protestant." I said, Me too! Are your Episcopalian or Baptist? He said, "Baptist!" I said, "Wow! Me too! Are your Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord? He said, Baptist Church of God!" I said, "Me too! Are your Original Baptist Church of God or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?" He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God!" I said, "Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?" He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915!" I said, "Die, heretic scum!" and pushed him off.

rbanffy9• 15 years ago

Th differences between vi and Emacs are not small

phiggy• 15 years ago

If you like this, check out RubyPython[1], a project recently started by Aman Gupta, one of Github's new hires.

1: https://github.com/tmm1/rubypython

halostatue3• 15 years ago

This claim is incorrect: Aman Gupta did not create RubyPython, nor does he claim to (and Aman's repo linked above even shows that his repo is a fork of my repo).

Aman has provided some comments, discussion, and code back to RubyPython over the last few days. I know this because I've been chatting with him and pulling his modifications back into the main GitHub repo[1] (which happens to be mine) and pushing them back into the canonical repo on Bitbucket[2] (which is the original creator's repo).

RubyPython was created in 2008 by Zach Raines, rewritten to use FFI in late 2010. Steeve Morin forked it as Rupy (apparently with Zach's blessing as Zach pointed me to it when I posted a bug fix to Zach's code) earlier this year. I got involved shortly after Steeve's fork. After some discussion, we (Steeve, Zach, and I) unforked Rupy back into RubyPython and opened the project a bit wider. I'm currently working on a new release (0.5) that should be out later this week that unifies the two repositories and includes some fixes and enhancements by Aman.

We're using Schacon's wonderful hg-git[3] for navigating between git and hg.

[1] https://github.com/halostatue/rubypython [2] https://bitbucket.org/raineszm/rubypython/ [3] https://hg-git.github.com/

Montagist• 15 years ago

why the lucky stiff was like the BucketHead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckethead) or Daft Punk of programming. I like that - besides the mysterious persona thing - he also reserved the right to follow any tangent; He's a musician as well and made an album for one of his programming books if i'm not mistaken.

If/when I release my programming mixtape - in which i'll spite hot fire about unit testing and my gripes with MVC - he'll definitely get a spot in the liner notes. haha :)

Unholy: _why's Ruby to Python compiler

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