Random thoughts of the day
I always bounce through a fairly regular pattern when it comes to programming. It goes a little something like: prototype an idea with Ruby code. Find out it is slow. Get frustrated. Start writing code in C++. Take a lot longer, but be impressed by how the strict type system tends to force me to write better programs. Get frustrated with code verbosity. Start looking for something else to program in that mixes the expressiveness of Ruby with the speed of C++ (one day I will realize that these two are probably mutually exclusive). Decide that a more functional language will suit my needs. OCaml? Erlang? Maybe something on the JVM! Scala? Clojure? Get frustrated with build system (I don’t care what you say, Maven is just stupid) or lack of libraries. Go back with my tail between my legs to Ruby. Start looking at all the Ruby options: MRI, MacRuby, JRuby …
But wait! How is it that I have somehow always overlooked Rubinius? JIT compilation on LLVM? Future multi-VM implementation (hello sandbox!)? Holy cow! That is AWESOME. Rubinius is definitely my VM of choice from now on.
P.S. Totally unrelated, but check out Ruby Processing — it is pretty damn cool.
