Topic for seminar

[coldhead]

Originally Posted by CraigD

the most compelling and perplexing question concerning computer technology is why there has been hardly any increase in the sophistication of software and software development tools.

See my earlier post.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by coldhead

Here's one.
Introduction to Ruby & Ruby on Rails.
http://www.rubyonrails.com/

Ruby is beautiful! Thank you for pointing me to it. I look forward to getting to know it better in the coming weeks.

In an attempt to reciprocate, let me present my personal favorite “joy and less code” language, M (AKA MUMPS, ANSI X-11.1-1995, Cache). Although there’re several open source implementations of M available, I recommend this free, unlimited-use single-user version of a commercial implementation. This one will run quietly on your desktop or a server on your network, and can be accessed by any telnet terminal emulator (a simple one slightly nicer than the one that come with Windows comes bundled with the download).

• Ruby is public domain via Yukihiro Matsumoto’s GPL, ca. 1995. M is public domain because it was developed by Octo Barnett and friends under a US federal grant in the ca. 1970.
• Ruby is interpreted and terminal-based, commonly in an interactive, “direct” mode. So is M.
• Ruby is intrinsically weakly (no true multiple inheritance) object-oriented. M is not even weakly OO, despite some implementer’s tacked-on extensions.
• Ruby’s arithmetic is arbitrary-precision. M’s is limited (typically 16-18 decimal digits). If you like to use M to mess with big numbers, you’ll need to write or acquire and use better math functions.
• Ruby’s pretty terse. M, which supports and encourages abbreviation of its keywords, is more terse. It’s arguably nearly as terse as a procedural language can be. Example:

  # recursive factoral function in Ruby
  def fact(n)
    if n == 0
      1
    else
      n * fact(n-1)
    end
  end
  
   ; recursive factoral function in M
  fact(n) q:n=0 1 q $$fact(n-1)

• Named functions/subroutines in Ruby must be defined. M programs can modify themselves dynamically (though one is to be cautioned that this can lead pretty far down the rabbit hole!)

[coldhead]

I've put my hand up to do Introduction to Ruby & Ruby on Rails for the Brisbane Mysql Meetup Group on the 6th Aug next month.

Most members are in a local Php group & are die-hard phpheads.

Even without Rails, Ruby and ActiveRecord is a killer combination.

I'm doing it because it’s my duty, and also I like seeing experienced web developers jaws drop in astonishment.

[alexander]

I've put my hand up to do Introduction to Ruby & Ruby on Rails for the Brisbane Mysql Meetup Group on the 6th Aug next month.

Most members are in a local Php group & are die-hard phpheads.

Even without Rails, Ruby and ActiveRecord is a killer combination.

I'm doing it because it’s my duty, and also I like seeing experienced web developers jaws drop in astonishment.

you are kidding right? Ruby is a cool language and all, but you are better off doing a presentation on Lisp to the die hard web developers then on Ruby. How well do you know PHP to judge how powerful it is in comparison to Ruby, PHP was pronounced the best programming language of 2003, its Object model is crazy good, yet its still as powerful procedural language as PHP4 was, its so intertwined with the database that speeds of return on queries are faster than any language i have tried to date, especially with sqlite, it inherrits perl regular expression engine and many of its string manipulation functions, also completely open-source engine, so unless you can make my eyes pop, chances that those web developers guys eyes will pop, is kinda slim there...
I still think that you should do the presentation on Python then Ruby, or if you really want to blow them away do Lisp, the craziest language to date, you write code that makes code that makes code that makes code, it is the AI language for that very reason, I'd give that a look before you go any further with your topic...

Originally Posted by buffy

I dispair when looking at the great potential projects sitting there on sourceforge.net that, well, just *sit* there... There are both economic as well as managerial issues that could be talked about ad infinitum...

not every project can be completed, and as you said money, time and so on are major drawbacks, i know by myself, but sometime someone will go, hey that's cool, lets do something with this...

[coldhead]

Originally Posted by alexander

you are kidding right? Ruby is a cool language and all, but you are better off doing a presentation on Lisp to the die hard web developers then on Ruby. How well do you know PHP to judge how powerful it is in comparison to Ruby, PHP was pronounced the best programming language of 2003, its Object model is crazy good, yet its still as powerful procedural language as PHP4 was, its so intertwined with the database that speeds of return on queries are faster than any language i have tried to date, especially with sqlite, it inherrits perl regular expression engine and many of its string manipulation functions, also completely open-source engine, so unless you can make my eyes pop, chances that those web developers guys eyes will pop, is kinda slim there...
I still think that you should do the presentation on Python then Ruby, or if you really want to blow them away do Lisp, the craziest language to date, you write code that makes code that makes code that makes code, it is the AI language for that very reason, I'd give that a look before you go any further with your topic...


not every project can be completed, and as you said money, time and so on are major drawbacks, i know by myself, but sometime someone will go, hey that's cool, lets do something with this...

Well mate,
I've only had quick looks at php & python as far as web dev. goes, being more of a 4gl (powerbuilder) developer in another life.
Niether of the aforementioned lang.'s grabbed my attention.
ruby did. I admit I am biased in my preferred language , as most people that write code are and my preferred language is, you guessed, Ruby.
It was designed to be object oriented from the ground up. The author of ruby, Matz, looked at the scripting languages available didn't like what he saw and thought 'stuff it I'll write my own', (thanks again Matz,) so he did. 10 years later we have a mature open source language that I like.
It is all part of my cunning plan to plant the seed of ruby into the minds of these commited Mysql developers/users in Brisbane and later, maybe, just maybe, they well need the services of someone that has proven knowledge in this new tool.

Who would they think of?

If all goes well with the ruby presentation, maybe I'll do a lisp or M or Python one next month.

Only kidding.

[alexander]

If you put it that way, ok, as long as you give a presentation on Lisp and Python eventually...

[GAHD]

How about www.python.org, there's something worth a seminar.

[alexander]

and your confusion comes from where exactly GHAD?
are you judging an awesome product by the coloring sceme of their website?

[GAHD]

lol, no, I was being serious. I'm a BIG fan of Python. The variable-on-the-fly coding is just too cool.

[alexander]

sorry, it just sounded like you were a bit sorcastic to me anyways, sorry

Whats really cool also is that you can use things like jython, which is a compiler that compiles python code into java p code, I'm soo lucky to know python, I would never want to code in Java, even if someone was standing over me with a gun...

Plus you have a better chance of landing a job as a Java programmer if you know Python, and a little Java then Java and no python. Its quite cool, if you look on that website, you can get a list of companies that actively use Python, companies like Google.... its an awesome language, you can whip something up on a fly, quickly, easily and the execution times are quite satisfying. use it all the time for inside OS projecs (those would differ from projects that i do for places like hypography and firefox which have to do with web programming and thus have little to do with anything inside the os, well maybe except for this thing i've been trying to carve some time out to get a beta for for hypo...)