\t\t\t\tVery nice to read.<\/p>\n
\nRuby used to annoy me simply by existing. I first heard about Ruby
\nyears ago, in maybe 1997 or 1998, and folks said it was kind of like
\nPerl, but “cleaner”, whatever that meant. Ruby fans back then seemed
\nlike a tiny minority of rebels and fringe separatists. <\/i><\/span>
Ruby irked me primarily because we already had Perl, which was
\nworking just fine thank you very much. And if for some strange reason
\nyou didn’t like Perl, we had Python. If Perl fans were dog owners, and
\nPython fans were cat owners, then Ruby fans seemed like ferret owners.
\nThey could go on and on about how much they adored<\/em> their
\nbeady-eyed albino stretch-limo rats, and how cute<\/em> they were,
\nbut we all knew they were just looking for attention. Nobody really
\nwants a pet rat. (Ferret owners will correct me and say they’re not
\nrodents; they’re more closely related to weasels and skunks. As if that
\nhelps.) Regardless, I didn’t want to have anything to do with Ruby. <\/i><\/span>
Last year, though, I was looking at a bunch of different languages
\nin the hopes of finding one to replace Perl for small- to medium-sized
\ntasks. One day my magic Perl dust had worn off rather suddenly, and I’d
\njoined the growing ranks of people who were beginning to notice the
\nemperor was a wee bit underdressed. But all the alternatives to Perl
\nlooked pretty bad themselves, and I started judging languages by how far
\n I’d get into the reference manual before throwing it across the room. <\/i><\/span>
I eventually picked up a Ruby book — … <\/i><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n