Ruby Is The Future

http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/ruby-is-the-future/

by reyu • 17 years ago

31 53 17 years ago

ankhmoop5• 17 years ago

The author claims that monkey-patching private methods to expose them publicly is representative of Ruby's beauty, and specifically:

"... later upgrades to the library don’t need to be re-fixed: the one-time patch will automatically get re-applied by application code automatically!"

Anyone who fails to realize how monkey-patching can and will break both subtly and catastrophically across library upgrades has no business advising anyone regarding language choices.

[Edit] I hate April Fool's Day. Depressingly, the author's satire is so subtly aligned with common arguments as to so thoroughly fool.

ansin15• 17 years ago

Just because it's a satire doesn't mean the title in incorrect. I would argue that Ruby is, in fact, the future for the same reason that Python is the future.

As for monkey patching, yes, it's ill-advised in general just as global scope and gotos are ill-advised for similar reasons. However, monkey patching is a powerful feature if used responsibly as Chad Fowler has noted ("The Virtues of Monkey Patching"):

http://chadfowler.com/index.cgi/Computing/Programming/Ruby/T...

Now admittedly, not every programmer is as competent or responsible as Chad Fowler or the programming world would be a very different place but the point is there's a right way and a wrong way to do it.

Werner Schuster's article on InfoQ ("Ruby's Open Classes - Or: How Not To Patch Like A Monkey") has more good advice on how to do it the right way:

http://www.infoq.com/articles/ruby-open-classes-monkeypatchi...

ankhmoop5• 17 years ago

As noted in Werner Schuster's article, many languages (such as C# or Scala) do support type-safe, non-ambiguous, non-conflicting extension of existing classes, demonstrating that extension of existing classes can be safely implemented and does not require the use of dangerous monkey-patching.

Xichekolas• 17 years ago

Yeah I looked at the headline and the url next to it and did a doubletake. When I see enfranchisedmind.com I immediately think: OCaml!

plaes• 17 years ago

Just two words: "Hopefully not..."

ansin15• 17 years ago

Why? Because of monkey patching, syntax, performance, the community or some other reason such as you prefer Python or have an intuitive, ineffable and unexpressable disklike of the language or because Matz is from Japan and they bombed Pearl Harbor?

nir7• 17 years ago

I think (and I mostly code Ruby these days) it's not least because of comments like this.

omouse• 17 years ago

Ruby isn't a very good Smalltalk, nor is it a good Lisp.

Tichy2• 17 years ago

(not the OP) I am still trying to like it, but my impression is that it is quite messy, and the documentation for Ruby is often bad.

neilo• 17 years ago

I'm going to dig through HN archives or wait until tomorrow to read any news.

petercooper• 17 years ago

martoo on the equivalent Reddit post had the best thing to say about this:

"There needs to be a special term for an attempt at an April Fool's Day Joke, which is in all of its points true and then ends up looking like a joke made by an author at his own expense."

http://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/8966h/ruby_is_the_futu...

Ruby Is The Future

Related Stories