Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I doubt that Ruby is so feature poor to justify Perl having more than 50 tests for every 1 of Ruby's.

Perhaps Ruby isn't "feature poor". Perhaps Perl is "edge-case rich".

The language is rather complex. Browsing at random through the dreaded Camel Book, here are some things I find, in no particular order: a goto statement with three forms (page 105), typeglobs (pg 115), explicit syntax for references (pg 116), a text-formatting mechanism in core (pg 121), expressions that evaluate completely differently in "scalar context" vs "list context" (pg 45), taint mode (pg 357)...

A more fundamental question is: Where do these numbers come from? And an even more fundamental question is: Since when did counting tests prove anything? Isn't that just like counting lines of code, or counting the number of bugs that have had to be fixed? (Give me a day or two and I'll double the raw number of Ruby's tests! I'll just add more assertions!)



The difference in how values are treated alone is enough to quintuple the test cases. :)




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: