Why not Ruby?

I was just getting to like Steve Yegge. I enjoyed his terrific Math Every Day, Tour de Babel and Is Weak Typing Strong Enough. Well, I really still do like him, but his recent Interviewing Ruby Programmers article just grated.

I really don't care about the interviewing portion of the article. It's just that he's decided that Ruby is the Next Big Thing (basically because of RoR), and so his writing now reflects his need to make that happen:

Ruby is exceptionally easy to learn — far more so than Perl, C++, C#, Java, or even PHP. Oh hell, I’ll just say it: it’s easier to learn than Python ....

.... As it happens, Python is my second-favorite language ...

I really could defend all the points Steve goes into ... the whitespace thing, the "frosty" Python culture, the fact that Python people don't "get" marketing (probably the most accurate statement he makes). But there's really no need. You see, Ruby has all the same important things that are keeping it from widespread adoption that Python does.

A new programming language needs three things for widespread adoption: 1) accepted syntax (close enough to a C-like syntax that people feel comfortable), 2) good libraries, and 3) a good RAD IDE. The main problem is that Ruby has the first two items, but it doesn't have a good supporting IDE to go with it ... much the same as Python.

Java has Eclipse. C# has Visual Studio.NET. What does Ruby have? RADRails, which is in much the same position as all the other Python IDEs out there (Komodo, Wing, PyDev) ... it provides a sub-par experience compared to Eclipse or VS.NET.

I'm betting that I'm not far off in saying that Rails may even be Ruby's downfall. RoR may cause Ruby to be seen as a solely "web development" language, especially when its best IDE is tied to Rails.

Honestly, Python is much closer to breakout status at this point because of IronPython. Once IronPython gets fully integrated with VS.NET, its visibility will increase a thousand-fold. Plus, the third piece of the puzzle -- a killer GUI-builder/RAD IDE -- will be in place. It can't happen too soon.

Iran fires its first stealth missile

Absolutely frightening. Via Tinkerty Tonk.

Interesting: Ruby's Lisp heritage

From Mark Watson.

Buttered cigarettes ... yum!

Via Digg, Ambien promotes sleep-eating. The problem is not knowing what you'll be fixing for that midnight snack!

Why not wxPython

Hoang has some insight into why it's probably a good idea that wxPython isn't the standard GUI for Python. As I've worked with Tkinter more, it's certainly limiting in some respects, but being connected with Tcl/Tk, it's very stable. I'd hate to try keeping up with API changes every time a new version of Python was released.

I know I keep bringing this up, but ...

Scotty just had a major HD crash ... his conclusion was off-site backups and RAID 1 -- unfortunately, a little too late.

TSPsolver

I've been tinkering again -- I've written a Python program that solves traveling salesman problems from the TSPLIB95 library. The GUI is in Tkinter, so it's cross-platform. It's still in beta, but it's working. Unix and Windows versions are available. I will be adding new solution algorithms in the near future, and I'll try to figure out why the large problems on Unix seem to get hung up with threading issues.

UPDATE: I had to add a sleep command (with a very short duration) to the calculation thread in order to give the GUI thread time to run properly on the Unix side. This must have to do with Python's threading being simulated, but it's poor nonetheless. Windows, amazingly, had no threading issues.

McAfee Anti-Virus: I'm Helping!

Speaking of liability issues, McAfee released an AV update that started misidentifying good programs as viruses. Some people still haven't recovered.

Not that I think that software companies should be required to provide bug-free code (because that's impossible), but I do think companies should be held liable for major screw-ups like this. Certain types of basic utilities like this should be held to a measurable standard for software quality.

More proof that you should backup your online files

Another story today related to the wisdom of backups: GMail user gets kneecapped. Apparently Google deleted a guy's entire email account without warning. About 300MB worth of crucial data.

He's understandably upset, but how will Google be held accountable? The bottom line is that you have to be responsible for your own backups. (It's especially important to remember this since it looks like Google is planning their "GDrive" online backup service. What happens when they lose not just your email, but all your data too?)

UPDATE: Looks like Amazon is starting their own service too. I can't find anything on their web page indicating their liability for lost files.

UPDATE: Jeremy Zawodny has some thoughts on the subject. Can't say I agree with him though; why's Amazon so much better than Google?