GTK+ Forums

Micah Carrick · Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 5:38 am Post subject: Any GTK+ programmers using Ruby?

I've programmed in many languages-- and find myself somewhat stubborn in leaving a language for it's being "easy" and "productive" over it being "powerful" and "efficient".

Lately I've been learning some Ruby (and Rails) for some work related stuff--where productivity actually does have a heavier precedence. I've done Pytho n, PHP, and C++ with GTK+ -- but only "Hello World" in Ruby.

I'm loving Ruby as a scripting language--and WAY in love with Ruby on Rails for web development.

I'm hoping this thread can start a bit of a conversation about any thoughts and experiences with using Ruby for GTK+ applications. Let me know what y'all think about using Ruby to develop GUI applications for Linux... pros, cons, etc.

xaos5 · Familiar Face Joined: 05 Nov 2006 Posts: 19

I personally have never worked with ruby, but i'm the same way (prefer c/c++ over higher lvl languages). If you feel ruby is faster, your program is still stable (assuming it was in the first place), and performance is on par compared to a lower-level language, I see no reason not to use it.

Since you mentioned its for a work environment; if anybody else is going to be working on the program code, they might not like the fact its developed in ruby.

caracal · Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 2:01 pm Post subject: Any GTK+ programmers using Ruby?

I worked with ruby and gtk for a couple of years. Its nice and easy to use the ruby gnome website as lots of gtk binding (vte, gtksourceview, gtkhtml, libglade, rsvg, cairo, etc) not as many as other scripting languages like perl, python.

They ownly problem is ruby is DOG slow i mean sloooooow so your not going to be building any huge applications or even pure ruby 3D games.

Me personally i use C & Lua.
I use C for building my gui and where i need performance in my app & i use lua as my general core language.

Micah Carrick · Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 9:49 pm Post subject:

Regarding the speed issue, how does the inline-C in Ruby work? Would that be an easy solution for process-intensive routines within a GTK+ application?

caracal · Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 11:17 pm Post subject:

Here is some info on inline C in Ruby.

http://www.zenspider.com/ZSS/Products/RubyInline/