[收藏]forword of 《Pragmatic programmers - programming ruby 2nd ed》

ruby开始变得火了。最近游走于不同语言之间，切实体会到了语言本来就是一门思想。加之不断听到ruby的名字，更是产生好奇。没有什么更加吸引我，除了ruby说，它可以换一种思考方式，我就上钩了。喜欢那句话，The stone has started rolling. It will became a great mountain and fill the whole earth.这是新书《Pragmatic programmers - programming ruby 2nd ed》的第一版和第二版的前言，ruby的作者向我们回顾了ruby的过去，尽管在他看来，这一切都太不可思议了。这些文章并没有阐述什么实质问题，但是作者写的很动人。我想也许各位都并不怎么了解ruby，与其一开始就扎入技术细节，倒不如先来看看这篇文章，体会一下ruby的激情。

Foreword to the

First Edition

Man is driven to create; I know I really love to create things. And while I’m not good

at painting, drawing, or music, I can write software.

Shortly after I was introduced to computers, I became interested in programming languages.

I believed that an ideal programming languagemust be attainable, and I wanted

to be the designer of it. Later, after gaining some experience, I realized that this kind of

ideal, all-purpose language might be more difficult than I had thought. But I was still

hoping to design a language that would work for most of the jobs I did everyday. That

was my dream as a student.

Years later I talked with colleagues about scripting languages, their power and possibility.

As an object-oriented fan for more than fifteen years, it seemed to me that OO

programming was very suitable for scripting too. I did some research on the ’net for a

while, but the candidates I found, Perl and Python, were not exactly what I was looking

for. I wanted a language more powerful than Perl and more object-oriented than

Python.

Then, I remembered my old dream and decided to design my own language. At first I

was just toying around with it at work. But gradually it grew to be a tool good enough

to replace Perl. I named it Ruby—after the precious red stone—and released it to the

public in 1995.

Since then a lot of people have become interested in Ruby. Believe it or not, Ruby is

actually more popular than Python in Japan right now. I hope that eventually it will be

just as well received all over the world.

I believe that the purpose of life is, at least in part, to be happy. Based on this belief,

Ruby is designed to make programming not only easy but also fun. It allows you to

concentrate on the creative side of programming, with less stress. If you don’t believe

me, read this book and try Ruby. I’m sure you’ll find out for yourself.

I’m very thankful to the people who have joined the Ruby community; they have helped

me a lot. I almost feel like Ruby is one of my children, but in fact, it is the result of the

combined efforts of many people. Without their help, Ruby could never have become

what it is.

I am especially thankful to the authors of this book, Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt.

Ruby has never been a well-documented language. Because I have always preferred

writing programs over writing documents, the Ruby manuals tend to be less thorough

than they should be. You had to read the source to know the exact behavior of the

language. But now Dave and Andy have done the work for you.

They became interested in a lesser-known language from the Far East. They researched

it, read thousands of lines of source code, wrote uncountable test scripts and e-mails,

clarified the ambiguous behavior of the language, found bugs (and even fixed some of

them), and finally compiled this great book. Ruby is certainly well documented now!

Their work on this book has not been trivial. While they were writing it, I was modifying

the language itself. But we worked together on the updates, and this book is as

accurate as possible.

It is my hope that both Ruby and this book will serve to make your programming easy

and enjoyable. Have fun!

Yukihiro Matsumoto, a.k.a. “Matz”

Japan, October 2000

 

 

 

 

Foreword to the

Second Edition

No one in 1993 would have believed that an object-oriented language created by a

Japanese amateur language designer would end up being used worldwide and that the

language would become almost as popular as Perl. It was insane. I admit that. I didn’t

believe it either.

But it happened, far exceeding my expectations. It was caused—at least in part—by

the first edition of this book. The famous Pragmatic Programmers chose a dynamic

language that was virtually unknown to anyone outside of Japan and wrote a good

book about it. It was just like a miracle.

That’s now history. The future starts now.We have the second edition of Programming

Ruby, which is better than the first one. It’s no longer a miracle. This time, the grownup

Ruby community helped to develop the book. I just needed to sit and watch the

community working together.

I really appreciate the Pragmatic Programmers, Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt, and

other people from the community who helped with this book (guys, sorry for not naming

you personally). I love the friendliness of the Ruby community. It’s the best software

community I have ever seen. I also appreciate every programmer in the world who

uses Ruby.

 

 

 

 

The stone has started rolling. It will became a great mountain and fill the whole earth.

Yukihiro Matsumoto, a.k.a. “Matz”

Japan, August 2004