Posted by Rick DeNatale
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 02:24:00 GMT
InfoQ recently published a
video interview with Dave Thomas (of OTI fame).
In his inimitable style, Dave covers lots of interesting topics in software development, both today and with a historical perspective.
I agree with almost everything he says, and find the rest food for thought.
His comments about Java as a platform are quite germane to the article I published yesterday. If you’ve been exposed to Big Dave before, you’ll enjoy this, and if you haven’t it’s a good introduction.
Tags BigDave, iconoclasts, java, ruby, smalltalk | 1 comment | no trackbacks
Posted by Rick DeNatale
Fri, 08 Feb 2008 21:14:00 GMT
The more I think about Ruby in relation to other object programming languages I’ve worked with, the more I realize that there’s a continuum of static vs. dynamic typing.
Ruby fits close to one end of that continuum. Understanding this can help understand how to best use the language. I recently had a quick look at Russ Olsen’s new book Design Patterns in Ruby
and looked at his section on the observer pattern. I’d just posted to ruby-talk about this pattern, how it was implemented in Smalltalk, and a more Rubyish implementation. I’ll get to that at the end of this article, but first I really feel the urge to talk about instance variables.
If we view a type as a particular interpretation of a memory layout, I see something like this
| Language |
Outside |
inside |
| Java |
static |
static |
| Smalltalk |
encapsulated |
static |
| Ruby |
encapsulated |
dynamic |
Read more...
Posted in ruby, smalltalk | Tags binding, java, variables | 3 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Rick DeNatale
Thu, 21 Jun 2007 19:06:00 GMT
Maybe I’ve gotten a bit sensitive of late to the perception some Rubyists
seem to have of Smalltalk-bred Rubyists like me. So I thought that I might say a bit more of what
I think of the current and future of Ruby as a language.
What follows is much longer than what I expected it to be when I started writing it yesterday,
I hope that some will find it some combination of interesting, useful, thought-provoking, or
at least amusing.
Read more...
Posted in psychology, ruby, smalltalk, humor | Tags C, java, language, language_wars | 8 comments | no trackbacks
