The Prejudgement of Programming Languages

  • by Gary Bernhardt
  • runs Destroy all software

Alternative Title: 10 years of failures and bad mistakes

2001-

  • Used to be ignorant of software

2001

  • C is the best thing!
  • Java Sucks cause it has garbage collection
  • Programming is supposed to be hard, right?

2003

  • Learned Lisp
  • Started his own crazy language
  • But Python did the same thing, so went with that instead
  • Python <3

2006

  • Exhausted by his company, Python
  • BitBacker

2009

  • Started doing Ruby/Python 50/50
  • Every day of the year switched languages halfway through

Quotes of the time:

  • “I can integrate Python lib in 10 minutes, Ruby lib in an hour…”
  • “Ruby syntax tricks can be hard, but other languages might want to take note”
  • “Wrote a Python specer that would have been trivial to do in Python”

Not sure Ruby is serious cause the docs have some crazy stuff

Q2 2010

Writing tests in python:

class TestCount(UnitTest):

    def test_counter(self):

        c = Counter()
        c.count(1)
        self.assertEquals(1, c)

Writing tests in ruby:

require 'counter'
describe Counter do
    if "increments" do
    c = Counter.new
    expect { c.increment }.to change { c.count }.by(1)
end
  • claim: “RSpec is confusing”

    • But not really true
    • Feigned ignorance
  • Python is based off of SUnit: 1994

Awesome tweet he made: “Python programmer rejects without considering its value, Ruby accept without considering it’s value

Instance Variables in Ruby

  • Ugly things in Ruby
class Horse

    def what
        @mustard
    end
end
puts Horse.new.what # => 5
  • Really? Let’s take another look…
class Horse

    def what
        @mustard ||= compute_it
    end
end
puts Horse.new.expensive
  • This is how you do memoization in Ruby.

  • Really trivial to do something really important

  • Some bits being added to Python already exist in Ruby

    • Generators
    • Decorators

Summary

  • It is really clear in Python why certain decisions were made

  • No other language makes the design decisions so clearly

  • Ruby’s design is not that hard for a good developer

  • Ruby is different

    • More testing
    • Crazy bleeding edge that often doesn’t work
    • Community changes things in weird ways sometimes

Why does this all matter?

  • You can’t evaluate something until you really play with it
  • Blocks rock