What is the Ruby Way?

Daniel Butler — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 21:12:00 -0400

Hal Fulton, a computer scientist from Austin, Texas, has graciously provided an updated second edition of The Ruby Way. An article at InfoQ provides a thoughtful excerpt from his new book, which abounds with quoted wisdom about design and simplicity. An example of his writing:

What Larry Wall said about Perl holds true: “When you say something in a small language, it comes out big. When you say something in a big language, it comes out small.” The same is true for English. The reason that biologist Ernst Haeckel could say ”Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” in only three words was that he had these powerful words with highly specific meanings at his disposal. We allow inner complexity of the language because it enables us to shift the complexity away from the individual utterance.

Ruby has transformed my way of thinking about programming, now that I continually take simplicity, elegance, form and function into consideration when crafting a solution, and I am eagerly awaiting the release of this book.

Thanks, Hal!

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What is the Ruby Way?