[cutety]

> without a lot of the strange quirks of perl

And instead with a lot of the strange quirks of Ruby!

\s, only kind of, I love Ruby but it does have a few quirks that I see confuse some people coming from other languages when they start writing non-trivial Ruby code (literally everything is an object being a big one — “what do you mean a class is an object?! modules too?!”).

However, these quirks are much, much easier to learn, understand, and possibly eventually come to like, rather than some (many) of the quirks that exist in Perl.

[chrisseaton]

> what do you mean a class is an object

I think that's pretty standard for object orientated languages. I can't find of any where it isn't the case off the top of my head. Is it not the case in Perl's object orientated support?

And why wouldn't it be an object? Seems more surprising for classes to be an exception.

[rileyphone]

It means they lack a metaobject protocol.

[Fellshard]

People coming from Javaville or C#land definitely don't have that kind of abstraction (and yes, the usual rebuttal is that they're procedural, not OO).

[jcranmer]

Classes are objects in Java. You can even create new classes at runtime in Java or use java.lang.reflect.Proxy to make existing objects implement different interfaces.

I once did this in a class project, including even manually creating the bytecode at runtime. Ironically, it's probably the most understandable and maintainable of the crazy metaclass-style reflection I've done (although that's probably mostly due to the fact that the scope was much more limited: I was only mirroring a set of interfaces into a different namespace to work around some stupid limitation in a different library).

[Fellshard]

You can, yes, but not nearly in the same way.

[chrisseaton]

> what do you mean a class is an object

> People coming from Javaville or C#land definitely don't have that kind of abstraction

What do you mean? A class is an object in both Java and C#.

[Fellshard]

Not exactly.

What you see as the Class type in Java, at least, is simply a representation of a class. It can tell you about a class, but it doesn't represent an actual thing you can manipulate, change, or use. I can't add a method to that class, or add a field, or manipulate its instances beyond basic method lookup and dispatch.

In something like Ruby or Smalltalk, a Class is an object. It can be changed live, altered, adapted, cloned, or otherwise used just like another object; and the application will change its behavior accordingly, right there on the spot.

I'd recommend reading up on prototype inheritance, as that is the model generally used in the latter languages.

[chrisseaton]

You’re telling me that class objects in Java are immutable while they’re mutable in Ruby. That’s orthogonal to whether they’re objects.

> I'd recommend reading up on prototype inheritance

Thanks but I’ve already literally got my PhD in metaprogramming in Ruby and object model implementation in Java. Ruby doesn’t use anything like prototype inheritance.

[kazagistar]

Its more then that... It's not even inmutable, not really. There are some things, like privaCy of access, that can be mutated by manipulating Java class objects.

That said, maybe the difference here is how often the janky metaprogramming of classes interferes with day to day peogramming; a java programmer might have never seen this stuff, moreso then a ruby one?

[jonathankoren]

Java has Class which is an Object.

[repsilat]

Honest question: Can you write

    Class foo = String;

in Java? If so I guess classes really are objects, if not I'd say "there are some objects that represent (or wrap) some classes somehow."

[chrisseaton]

I think what you mean is that classes are referenced by a separate namespace in Java and aren’t in Ruby.

That’s completely orthogonal to whether they’re objects or not.

You can keep fiction and non-fiction in separate bookshelves if you want but when you get either off the shelf it’s still a book.

[repsilat]

I guess I'm not sure what "object" means in Java, then.

In languages I'm used to, an object is a type of value, and values are things that you can store in (or refer to with) variables.

The only vaguely object-like feature of Java classes I can think of is that you can look up (static) methods/attributes on them with a dot.

Or is there more? You can't call `String.toString()`, so `String` isn't an instance of something that inherits from `Object`. I'm at a bit of a loss here... There obviously exist "class objects", but they're not normally what people refer to when they talk about classes. I'd say Java classes are almost purely lexical constructs (though I could be wrong there -- again, I don't know much about Java...)

[akdas]

    Class foo = String.class;

(Though `Class` is actually a generic type, so you'd want to include the type parameter in actual code.)

[repsilat]

Sure, I'd say that fits my second suggested wording -- `String.class` is an object that represents or wraps the `String` class.

[sytringy05]

Not to mention the nightmare of ruby versions and packages.

I quite like the language by my biggest drawback to using ruby for anything is versioning and packages.

[toasterlovin]

Honestly curious: can you give an example of what kind of issues you run into? Asking because I basically never have versioning or package issues with Ruby. And on the rare occasions when I do, there's usually a good Stack Overflow answer or Github issue.

[yxhuvud]

Huh, with Bundler, Ruby was one of the first language ecosystems that actually got it's act together on those points. It is so much more mature than python in this regard, for example.

[cutety]

I would agree, however bundler & rvm are incredibly easier to setup and use when comparing to Python’s virtualenv (and the few other alternatives frequently brought up). I’m not sure there is even an equivalent for the Perl ecosystem, as I gave learning Perl an actual effort a while ago (no idea why) and all it’s quirks and weird syntax immediately turned me away and I’ve never looked back.

[rat87]

Really?

I haven't used it much or in a while thought Ruby had their package story down.

Python packaging is pretty bad requirements.txt is a pretty adhoc list and pipenv doesn't seem ready for prime time(haven't tried poetry yet)

[rat87]

> \s, only kind of, I love Ruby but it does have a few quirks that I see confuse some people coming from other languages when they start writing non-trivial Ruby code (literally everything is an object being a big one — “what do you mean a class is an object?! modules too?!”).

That's also true in python

---| type(enum)

    <class 'module'>

Also ruby Procs aren't objects

And unlike Smalltalk &&/and ||/or are not methods