Comments on: Reason to like PHP?

By: RaS!

RaS! — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 09:10:05 +0000

I’ve studied Ruby for 2 weeks. After my hair became green, I moved back to PHP. IMHO Ruby sucks.

By: vedeney

vedeney — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 10:31:27 +0000

How do I check for a file’s existense via ruby without using exceptions? :)

By: Judofyr

Judofyr — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 06:24:19 +0000

Is it possible to read a file over web in Ruby?

By: Mark Dickenson

Mark Dickenson — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 18:06:52 +0000

Change cleaner to confusing and I will agree. :D

By: zjcboy

zjcboy — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 11:18:33 +0000

But I think in your example the Ruby code is cleaner AND shorter :)

By: Mark Dickenson

Mark Dickenson — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 06:40:19 +0000

Well, Ruby is definately not cleaner code. It seems to be designed to confuse people on purpose. :(

By: zjcboy

zjcboy — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 05:48:25 +0000

Or state it another way:

“clean” reduces the headache to understand the code
“short” reduces the boredom to understand the code

and when the two conflict, choose “clean” first, because boredom is better than headache :)

By: zjcboy

zjcboy — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 05:41:17 +0000

No no no~, I didn’t say “shorter = cleaner”, I said the Ruby code is “shorter AND cleaner”. The point is “cleaner”. Given two pieces of “clean code”, the “shorter” one is preferred.

By: Benjymouse

Benjymouse — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 18:32:45 +0000

I for did not claim that shorter is better. That’s not an absolute. But the claim has some merit to it, because simpler is better, and shorter is often simpler.

In your samples, the ruby version is hands down simpler. It’s not that the PHP version is longer, it is the fact that it includes script code in string literal, passed to a function which parses and executes a function?

The ruby version simple makes use of the built-in map algorithm. No extra parsing. To the point. And yes, shorter.

I’ve never programmed in ruby, but I do have experience with a lot of other languages. I don’t need to know every detail of ruby to recognize it a a very clean language (although I generally dislikes weakly typed/dynamically typed languages).

By: Mark Dickenson

Mark Dickenson — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 18:13:56 +0000

To me the Ruby code is about as obscure as you can get and I have been programming in a number of languages since the late 1970’s.

Just because it is shorter doesn’t make it cleaner. In most cases the shorter it is the more confusing and obscure it will be. It also doesn’t mean it is any faster. :) I have seen some very short code that is slow and ponderous compared to code that is longer and easier to understand while being faster.

Just saying it is shorter makes it better is a misnomer when it comes to programming languages. I can make some very small code that is a pain for anyone to decipher.

When I look at anything written with Ruby I get the impression the language was created by someone with a bad case of dyslexia.

At the least, someone trying to pull a prank on programmers by making a language that isn’t that logical while using syntax that fosters more than a little obfuscation.