[wellylug] Non-standard languages on Linux

[Phillip Hutchings]

Just my 2 cents ;)

> * Python: the language behind Gentoo's portage and Google.
> 
> <http://diveintopython.org/> (freely downloadable book, easy reading)
> <http://www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/index.htm> (I have only made it to
> problem 7 and I've been stuck so long I'm close to giving in and
> looking for a hint in the forums).

Python is great. Indentation replaces curly brackets, less characters
to type, and the full OO support complete with multiple inheritance
makes things nice. Python does have a procedural side, but it's easier
to do things OO. Doesn't preempt the programmers much - no
public/private definitions, everything's public and people are
expected to obey this. Also, nothing implicitly happens, even the
passing of the self variable to class methods has to be declared.

http://www.zope.org/ - Zope is a python based application server, just
for completeness.

> * Ruby: Asia's Python?
> 
> http://poignantguide.net/ruby/ (possibly the wierdest programming tutorial ever)

Ruby is a very nice language. Supports blocks, closures and
continuations. Most loops, such as a c-style for loop, are discarded
and replaced with iterators and blocks. Single inheritance only, but
it supports mix-in modules. You can also skip some grammar, such as
brackets and semicolons. Class definitions are never closed, so it's
simple to overwrite even system classes. Fully OO, procedural
functionality is a hack on top of the OO layer.

Ruby is closer to Perl in some respects, it supports inline regular
expressions like perl does, and also sets the same global variables.
However, this is still a hack on top of the OO layer. All attributes
are private, but accessors can be generated for you with little code.

Even though I like Python's simplicity, blocks and complete OO support
make Ruby more attractive.

http://www.rubyonrails.org/ - Ruby on Rails is the most commonly heard
use of Ruby at the moment. Very nice.

For new projects I'd go with Ruby.

-- 
Phillip Hutchings
http://www.sitharus.com/
sitharus at gmail.com / sitharus at sitharus.com