Tue May 19 22:30:41 BST 2009
I've been poised on the brink of learning what I'm currently thinking of as a "high-level scripting language" for a while now. Initially this was motivated by a desire for something quick to prototype code in with more scalability than a Bash script, but over time I've gathered together a whole raft of other little requirements. Most recently, I've been wishing for good cross-platform (that is: Windows and Linux) support, and support for Windows COM automation. I recently had to do some Excel automation using vbscript, which was something of an exercise in frustration seeing as I wasn't allowed to download the (no doubt extensive) MSDN vbscript dev kit from my Linux box and so had to rely on scraps of information on the language that I found kicking around the Internet.
So far, my quest for a new scripting language has taken in Perl, Python, Javascript, and now Ruby. I'm not trying to suggest I've really given all those languages much of a run for their money - I'm more at the stage of having dipped a toe into the shallow end of a few trivial scripts to get a feel for the way the language hangs together. Each of them has seemed perfectly reasonable, but hasn't really grabbed me until I gave Ruby a brief whirl. It feels familiar enough to be unintimidating, and yet simultaneously promises lots of glitzy features to draw one in (closures, whoopee!).
Perhaps best of all is the range of free quality documentation that exists on the net. Ruby seems like Python in that respect, only more so. Here are some of my favourites so far: