Ruby 07 Dec 2005 10:14 pm
Ruby Brewings
Computer programming is like any other career: you have to give it a kick in the John Henry every once in awhile to keep it interesting, otherwise you risk boredom, stagnation, or worse. That’s how Java feels lately. It has lost its luster, its challenging crackle. The initial discovery and adventure has been buried in a paradoxical swamp of rote boilerplate coding and dizzying Enterprise Specifications.
Time for a change of pace.
My first breath of fresh life recently was Apple’s Cocoa Toolkit for developing native Mac OS X applications, using the Objective-C programming language. So far so good, but it’s a huge code library with tons of great tools, and it only works on modern Apple systems. Great for my hobby projects, but it doesn’t really help me at my day job.
Enter the Ruby Programming Language, a fully object-oriented scripting language with solid cross platform support (OS X, Windows, UNIX) and a wealth of built-in libraries. I’ve just scratched the surface, but it does seem to light up that special spark that I’ve been missing from Java lately. A change of pace will really help fire me up again at work, and shake off those creeping doldrums. Let’s hope!
