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by Alifatisk 761 days ago
> Rails [...] that's what ruby is most used for

I wish that wasn't the case, I use Ruby heavily for gluing different systems together.
1 comments
mikepurvis 761 days ago
Outside of language level preferences, is there something about the ecosystem around Ruby that makes it particularly well suited to this? I would have thought Python was the glue language winner just because there are already bindings to the entire universe available for it.
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portpecos 761 days ago
Ruby just simply isn’t the glue language winner because of the heavy emphasis on rails.

From a systems perspective, I had to switch to python because it has pyroute2, which supports rtnl, devlink, ethtool and more.

I would have thought ruby had a full-fledged netlink library right now considering the stability of chef and puppet.

But all I could find was this from 8 years ago: https://github.com/BytemarkHosting/netlinkrb

I started off with ruby for systems glue but now I have a mix of python and ruby. I wish it was all ruby but the lack of updated “glue gems” and the prevalence of updated “glue eggs” means python really is the “glue language winner”.

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sam2426679 761 days ago
> I wish it was all ruby

Why do you not wish it was all Python?

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ilvez 761 days ago
My answer to this would be: This is totally personal, but for me Ruby is just a language that allows concisely and readable way express myself to get stuff done. Python just does not read so good and forces to do more boiler-plate. Probably skill-issue, but I knew Python before Ruby, so :shrug: To give out any examples, I would need to have some Python code on me, but I don't :D
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Alifatisk 760 days ago
I’d say simply because of language preference
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Alifatisk 761 days ago
> all I could find was this from 8 years ago: https://github.com/BytemarkHosting/netlinkrb

Yeah, that's so typical. I've almost become used to this, seeing useful gems being very old. To me, I see that as either abandoned (which means I have to fork it and polish it) or the gem is considered complete.

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Alifatisk 761 days ago
Ruby is my choice primarily because of its syntax and the powerful meta-programming capabilities. The ecosystem in itself is not any richer or better than Python, no, Python has faaar superior libraries and vibrant support. In my case, I've found ruby-toolbox.com to be useful when I need to scavenge for libraries.
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