Discussion on: What are the best and worst things about your favorite programming language?

[Ben Halpern]

I'll start with Ruby

The Good Parts

• Simple, flexible syntax to dive right in and make changes
• Tremendous scripting language, really easy to whip up a file to execute a behavior
• Mature ecosystem
• Language creator still involved and enthusiastic
• Generally supportive community
• Robust library
• Ruby on Rails is still going strong and a great framework if you like established conventions with flexibility to diverge as you need

The Bad Parts

• Pretty slow
• Eats up lots of memory
• Iffy support for concurrency/parallelism
• You might hate writing in it if you're used to more rigid syntax or don't like "magic"
• Isn't getting new innovative tooling at the same pace as "hotter" languages
• Not really the language of choice in any newer wave