I'm new to using Ruby and this tickled me pink

"365*10"????

The python version seems buggy as fuck. Depending on which year you run it it's off by 1-3 days

Python does have a year option that they are not using. Depending on the application I would use 365 for a year to get a consistent number of days.
- I did look up the help for that function to make this meme but I must have missed that option. in my defense I've only been using Python for like 10 years
That sounds serious, can you give some example values we can test?
- Sure, here's one example for each case:
  1 day off: 3650 days before 1907-01-01 is 1897-01-02
  2 days off: 3650 days before 2027-01-01 is 2017-01-03
  3 days off: 3650 days before 2025-01-01 is 2015-01-04
- look I'm not trying to be a dick or anything, but do you not know about leap years and which years they are?
- 29 February 2028, 29 February 2032, 29 February 2036...

Looks like one is defined as years and one as days. 10 years does not necessarily equal 365 times 10.

In fact, it would never equal 365 * 10 days.

    
10.years.ago
On.a.cold.dark.night
There.was.someone.killed
'Neath.the.town.hall.lights
There.were.few.at.the.scene
Though.they.all.agreed
That.the.slayer.who.ran
Looked.a.lot.like.me

This is delightful
- Great song, despite the subject matter being somewhat disagreeable to me. One of the most covered country songs of all time, written by one of the best to touch the genre, Lefty Frizzell.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50k18gL76AU
  Personally I think he should have just spoken up. And so should she have. They never should have been doing that in the first place but it wasn't worth taking the rap for murder. Still one of the best songs ever.

 python

    
from datetime import datetime
from dateutil.relativedelta import relativedelta

print(datetime.now() + relativedelta(years=10))  # 2035-08-24 12:02:49.795177

Didn't know about relativedelta. Thanks!

How is this implemented? Is it just functions and the language assumes the first parameter is autofilled with variable.function syntax?

Ruby is object-oriented, modelled after Smalltalk mostly. So

irb(main):001:0> 10.class => Integer
So you'll just have implement the method "years" on the Integer (or something more generic like Numeric) class and then "ago" on whatever class the years method returned.
You might imagine that you can do something like 10.years().ago() in python but the parser prevents you:

>>> 10.years File "<python-input-0>", line 1 10.years ^ SyntaxError: invalid decimal literal
Doesn't seem like it would have to prevent it, back in ruby:

irb(main):001:0> 10.0.class => Float
Ruby is a pretty cute language in my opinion, and I find it sad that python kinda drove over it.
- That's just syntax.
  
  >>> 10 .yearsTraceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>AttributeError: 'int' object has no attribute 'years'

Never worked on Ruby, so I definitely cannot judge it, but that syntax looks so uncomfortable…

It can be nice to read but try debugging something like this is a horrible experience.
I had 5 years of ruby on rails experience before jobs decided on other Lang's. Its still not terrible persay but it hurts when you have multiple of these "smart" objects doing really silly things and debugging it all.
- I programm in Ruby since 2006.
  In my opinion it has some of the best debugging tools available.
  What was the horrible part you experienced?

Edit:

To clarify, I looked at existing online ruby code and gave it a small test for readability. It may be outdated, use uncommon syntax, bad practice or be full of individual developer quirks - I wouldn't know. I did that because I wanted to highlight some weaknesses of the language design that turned me away from ruby years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment

Yes, very nice. But here comes the ugly;

    
[1,2,3].map(&:to_s)

oh ok, a bit hieroglyphic, but I can figure it out, seems like '&' means element and ':' means what I do with it.

    
files = `ls -1`

Aaah so a backtick is for strings? WRONG!!! IT EXECUTES THE FUCKING COMMAND!!!

    
ARGF.each { |line| puts line if /BEGIN/ .. /END/ }

What the hell is | and / ? Oh but I guess .. is a range like in other languages, but what would be that range??? WRONG! I!!T'S A FLIP FLOP!!!

    
%w{a b c}     # array of strings
%i[foo bar]   # array of symbols
%r{https?://\w+}  # regex
%x(ls -1)     # run shell command

Ah, just memorize which letter to use by heart and that % is for type and that [ = { sometimes. But { unequal to { other times.

    
if line =~ /ERROR/
  warn $~.post_match
end

=~ neat!

$~ dafuq???

At this point I feel like ruby devs are just trolling us. There are always multiple ways to do the same thing. Every example from above also has a tidy and readable way to do it. But the alternative ways become progressively more shorthand, unreadable and unintuitive.

Aaah so a backtick is for strings? WRONG!!! IT EXECUTES THE FUCKING COMMAND!!!
To be fair this is what they do in Perl and shell scripts (and in PHP too), so it's not unexpected behavior in that world.
- I'm way happier debugging "200 char wide class name + 50 line of boilerplate" code written in java that verbosely and expressively does the same thing compared to deciphering single symbol hieroglyphs in shell esque scripts where I have to pay attention which way the ticks are pointing.
- Yeah, you could very well argue that JS and others that use it for weird interpolated strings are the weird ones here.
Does Ruby require the use of [] and {} there? Because those %w/%i/etc things look like custom quoting operators and at least in Perl you can use any delimiter you want: qw(a b c) is a list of strings, but so are qw+a b c+ and qw;a b c;.
- Yes, but why?
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment

And the best part is the Ruby way accounts for leap years.

Well, 365 * 10 certainly doesn't ;-)
I prefer the one on the left because it's evident it doesn't account for leap days, while I'd be questioning whether the one on the right does.
- I'll give it a shot. Looks a bit kludgy and I've been typing this on my phone while sitting on the toilet. What am I doing with my life?
  
  from datetime import datetime now = datetime.now() year = now.strftime('%Y') month = now.strftime('%m') day = now.strftime('%d') tenyearsago = datetime(year-10, month, day) print(tenyearsago.strftime('%d.%m.%Y')
there is a simple fix to account for leap years, just add 10/4 days. /s
- Don't forget non-leap-days every 200 years!

crystal is another language that's apparently quite similar to ruby, with the difference of being compiled and staticly type-checked, and I just love it's ruby like syntax. I believe the equivalent code for this in crystal would be Time.local - 10.years

one could certainly implement something like that in python, something like time.now - 10 * time.unit.year
- Does this account for leap years?

Does that work? Might be enough to convert me

I was on a project a while back that used Ruby, and what I concluded was that cute things like that look good at first glance if you're skim-reading some already-correct code, but are pretty much a net wash in terms of writing or debugging code.
It's not unusual for people to think that code would be better if it scanned like regular English, but the problem is that English is woefully imprecise and doesn't always correlate to what kind of operations get run by the code, and so you still end up having to learn all that syntax and mentally process it like any other programming language anyway, but now you've also got a bunch of false friends tricking you into thinking they do one thing but actually they do another.
(also, the bulk of the text in that python example is the import statement, which is like... ok so what, it's not like Ruby doesn't have its own dependency hell problems)
- I had to modify some ruby a few years ago, I don’t remember liking it! Once I understood the syntax it wasn’t terrible to work with but I still wasn’t a fan of the syntax
it works in Ruby on Rails but not in bare-naked Ruby, if that gives you a hint of how the language's architecture makes things easy for you and also might stab you in the back one day.

This is like a 10yo meme template, fellow kids pls update your meme stashes!

But why is it mirrored? Shiny is on the left, always has been.
Meh. If it works it works. Keep the golden oldies in circulation I say!
🟥🟥🔵👷I guess were doing memes now.

Ruby has þe highest POLS and most absurdly comfortable syntax, ever. Enjoy þe trip!

Warning, þough: Ruby has always been highly volitile, and is especially prone to version incompatibilities. Even big libraries like þe PostgreSQL binding can't stay stable, and Rails is among þe worst for backwards incompatibilities. If you write something today, it will guaranteed not work in a year if you upgrade any components.

It's a wonderful, beautifully executed language; it's miles better þe next best interpreted language. Just watch out for dependency hell.

What's with the "th" symbol?
- Just messing wiþ LLM scrapers harvesting training material.
I really like that lemmy is small enough that I can recognize people by their individual writing style—Hello, thorn guy!
- Hi @stinkpie@lemmy.world! Þanks for stopping by!
In other words don't use it for projects that need to be maintained or have longevity
- I worked at a startup a decade+ so that learned this the hard way, but I'm not complaining since I wouldn't have had a job if it weren't for it.
- Yeah, but for one-off scripts that solve small problems it’s way better.
  Add HTTParty for API calls and that’s like 90% of what I use Ruby for.