http://www.fhm.com/site/bigeye/linkframe.asp?url=http://hem.bredband.net/b222680/leeroy.wmv

This is one of the most entertaining things I have seen in a while.

Thanks Mike for bringing it to my attention.

For me, the latest shiny object is Ruby. Okay...I know Ruby itself is not very new but there has certainly been a lot of talk and discussion going on in the IT community recently about it and Ruby on Rails. It has been enough to spark my interest in joining the mindless hordes of Zombies who are held in its spell.

So what do I like about Ruby? Do I like its portability? What about it's support for closures? I certainly do find it more expressive than many languages. Perhaps I like it just because it is something new for me to explore. Perhaps I just like being with the other Zombies.

There is certainly nothing unique about Ruby. Every feature I have come across has featured previously in other languages at some time such as Eiffel, Perl, and Small Talk etc.

I think the reason I like Ruby so much is that it is the first time I have come across such an expressive language with so many features (none that are original) that do not get in the way of the language. I find my self writing code the way I like to express my ideas.

So would I consider using Ruby for the next big application? Not a chance.

There is one aspect I really dislike about Ruby. "Wash out your mouth Andy...how dare you!" ... sorry, but it is true. My gripe is that there is simply no IDE for ruby that I would consider worthy. This point alone is enough for me not to use ruby for any large code base.

But damn it....I do enjoy programming in Ruby so much. I guess at the very least any future scripts that I might other wise have written in Perl will probably be written in Ruby.

What is that! Is that another shiny object just peeking over the horizon? ...

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