10 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know About Ruby | [ Prev | Home | Next ] |
I used to teach an after hours course in C programming for employees of a large manufacturing company. It was pretty easy to tell what programming languages the students had used previously just by looking at the style of C code they produced. It is certainly true that "You can write FORTRAN in any language".
Java programmers investigating Ruby will find a language that look similar in many ways. There are classes and modules, namespaces and scopes, instance variables and methods. A Java programmer will feel quite at home in this Object Oriented language.
So the temptation will be to continue to program in a Java-style. Sure, there are some things that are different (the lack of type declarations will probably be the first thing that strikes them). But nothing that can’t be worked around with a little effort … and they will miss a golden opportunity.
O'REILLY® OSCON 2005 | Copyright 2005 by Jim Weirich (All Rights Reserved) |