The Ruby Language Is Ruby a scripting language or not?

Is Ruby a scripting language? Personally I think it is a full programming language.When I think of a scripting langauge, I think of Perl or JavaScript, Ruby isn't like those, Ruby is a lot more like Java than Perl.What do you think?

Ruby is a full language, but I guess it gets put in the scripting ghetto because it's not pre-compiled (Ruby proggies are run from plain text code, not a binary). In some ways, it's the same problem as Python: there's a whole complete language there, but people blow it off because you don't have to compile a program to run it.

# What's Ruby

 

Ruby is the interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming.

It has many features to process text files and to do system management tasks (as in Perl).

It is simple, straight-forward, extensible, and portable.

This was copied from the official site.

 

I have tried the Ruby language, but have found that there is not much demand for Ruby programmers - outside of Japan, the homeland of Ruby.

 

You need to think Object-Oriented - just like when programming in Java, which by the way is not a scripting language, but a full programming language.

Ok, I recognize that Ruby is a scripting language.Of course there isn't much demand for Ruby programmers, very few people know about, and, as we now apparently have established, it is a scripting language. Those who account for the most programming jobs are corporations and businesses, and corporations and businesses have a tendency not to jump quickly to new and little-tested things, things that have little compatability and familiarity, especailly regarding technology.I just think that Ruby is one more step (as was/is Java) toward a more exclusive OOP programming language. This is maybe the beginning of a OOP trend, which is, of course, more important than whether or not Ruby is a scripting language or not.

do not call Ruby a scripting language; instead, call it a "dynamic object-oriented language."

Quoted from http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=18225 by Yukihiro Matsumoto

 

The maker of Ruby is concerned about how people would perceive the new language he had created. When you call it a scripting language, he feels it creates a limiting perception of what the language is capable of doing.

 

In fact, Ruby's scripting capability is only a subset of what it can do. It is a genuine OOP language which can handle big tasks.

 

If it's a question of whether or not Ruby should be hosted under the Scripting or Programming General forum, I'd say it can be in both places with different inclination.

You have a good point.I can't tell either if it is a scripting language or a prgramming language.Youu know that Perl is just a very strange language.

Edited November 5, 2009 by HannahI (see edit history)

"Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features."

Ruby is an awesome PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE and anyone who thinks that it is only good for scripting simple tasks is being very naive and does not truly understand the subtitles of this debate. Ruby is main stream and there are a lot of companies that use if in production environments. It has its strengths and weaknesses like any programming language and is very useful in certain applications. I mostly work with C/C++, but lately i have worked on a number of Ruby apps, and in certain applications it is brilliant, text handling is just one thing it does well, and for anyone who has worked with strings in C and then tried Ruby will understand just what i mean. No writing 100's of lines of handler code to do simple things, not convoluted iterations over pointers to search for elements in a string, just simple clean methods to do these things.

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Follow the link for Alexa rankings of sites that use Ruby on Rails, interestingly Twitter is on the top of the list, i think that alone shows the true power the Ruby has.
Edited November 6, 2009 by The_Fury (see edit history)