[NMLUG] Ruby

[wlrobbi at gmail.com (w robbi)]

I've been using Ruby as a Swiss army knife to help at workfor 8 years
now.  I found I needed a tool to assist me with pulling data out of
thousands of excel documents and formulate them and push the data to a
access / MSSQL database.   I took a look at VBS and after the "I love
you" virus and several patches later emailing and other sections of
vbs changed. This is the #1 thing I hate about windows.  I found that
Ruby would easily load win32ole objects and I could pull all the data
from the excel documents into hash tables and push it to access
quickly. Inventory control for the NMCI still uses the ruby program. 
Handing over the program to someone else was cake because of how
readable the language is to any one who has a little programming
skill.  I've been handed several perl and 2 python programs and they
were a real *itch to figure out and upgrade when needed.
  
Now, I use ruby on all of my work assignments. It has become my
ultimate resource. Ruby's gem system has virtually every tool I have
needed. "net/ssh" and "Fox12" are my current favorites.

I could spend hours raving about hash tables,the class system, OpenGL
in FOX, or how well Ruby has adapted to the OOP philosophy.  Ruby has
a very generic scripting base. But, has a large set of functionality
that enables for quick powerful little applications to be written.  It
really depends what type of application you need to write. But for me
Ruby has been the do all language.


On 8/13/05, Don Wilde <dwilde1@gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree, and for the same reasons. Perl references are nightmarish to
> change to add new features. With all the years of programming I have
> behind me, I still shut my eyes and guess what the hell's going to
> come out. In Ruby, .inspect is your friend. Makes print seem
> amateurish. I'm doing a monster parser/solver for SPICE equations
> (chip semiconductor parameters) at work, and in Ruby it's done in the
> raw language and it's 50x faster than Perl with Parse::RecDescent. I
> suspect that far fewer modules will be necessary for Ruby, as it's
> easier to program in the raw language than Perl is.
> 
> That's why I bought the Rails book, I have been using PHP in my
> business for web and Perl/HTML::Embperl at SNL, and both are lacking.
> PHP is not high-level enough and P/EP is just messy.
> 
> On 8/12/05, Matthew Paul Bohnsack <bohnsack@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm also impressed with Ruby.  I have a C and then Perl background,
> > and tried and gave up on Python, but I've been working through the
> > pickaxe and Rails books over the last couple of months.  Almost since
> > the day I began, 95% of my "new stuff" has been done in Ruby.  Going
> > back to do fixup and feature work in my production Perl is now an
> > enlightening experience - I can see the difference in a powerful way:
> > the Perl seems ugly and riddled with unnecessary cruft by comparison.
> >
> > Perl still has a clear edge with its CPAN, but I predict this benefit
> > wane in the next year or so, as Ruby seems to have a powerful
> > momentum.
> >
> > Rails and its ActiveRecord object-relational mapping (ORM) facility is
> > the killer app for me though.  You listen to the hype and you
> > understand it on a certain level, but you don't really become a rabid
> > believer, until you do start to do stuff in 1/10 the time it used to
> > take.
> >
> > irb (Ruby's interactive shell) is another thing that you can't live
> > without, once you become accustomed to having that kind of tool
> > available.
> >
> > Another thing I've really enjoyed is the way learning Ruby has made me
> > a better Perl programmer. Frequently using the iterator and block
> > idioms so common in Ruby code
> > (http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/CollectionClosureMethod.html), has
> > enabled me to more effectively use Perl's grep(), map(), and sort(),
> > where I used to most commonly use a less consise for loop.
> >
> > But the best part of Ruby is is the fun - it's fun to program in Ruby!
> >
> > Any other new Rubyists out there?
> > -
> > Matt Bohnsack
> > http://bohnsack.com/
> >
> > On 8/12/05, Don Wilde <dwilde1@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Have been doing some good work with Ruby these days. Anybody else out
> > > there as impressed as I am? I just bought a book about Rails and
> > > haven't started it, but the core Ruby language is so much clearer than
> > > Perl that in a comparison I'd have to call Perl a has-been except for
> > > CPAN. Thoughts?
> > >
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