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How does Ruby compare to Python?? How good is DESIGN of Rubycompared to Python?

Joe Mason joe at notcharles.ca
Wed Feb 25 21:48:30 EST 2004 
In article <t5fq30l29nidjh1tsksm8jlld03ff3av5o at 4ax.com>, Stephen Horne wrote:
> I don't know how widespread it is among very high level languages, but
> there is a reason (in the not-that-high-level sense) that C++, and
> other 3GLs with classes hacked on don't. I'm assuming object Pascals
> and Basics (esp Delphi and VB) count here, though don't sue me if I'm
> wrong - I'm not familiar with object support in either.

I didn't think Pascals and Basics supported function pointers at all,
but I haven't used them since high school, so maybe I just didn't
encounter them at the time.

> Anyway, from this perspective, the bound method is an interesting
> in-between concept. I've sometimes wondered if full currying support
> may have been a better choice, but then a bound method is much more
> efficient simply because it's simpler - not to mention avoiding some
> syntactic difficulties I ignored above.

I've always found the performance differences between functional and imperative
languages fascinating (well, ever since I found out about it) - on the
one hand, pure functional languages can prove facts about the code
mathematically, so in theory the compiler can optimize much more away.
But on the other hand, supporting all the extra function state they need
is very costly.

Of course, hybrid languages like Python and Ruby have the worst of both
worlds - side effects everywhere AND extra function baggage to pass
around.

Joe
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