AN ENGINEERING APPROACH TO PERL AND RUBY OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

Open Access
- Author:
- Brown, Angeline M
- Graduate Program:
- Computer Science and Engineering
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- December 01, 2011
- Committee Members:
- Dr Yuan Xie, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Mahmut Taylan Kandemir, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Yuan Xie, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor - Keywords:
- Catalyst
DTrace
Ruby
Perl
Ruby on Rails - Abstract:
- This study compares two object oriented programming languages, Perl and Ruby. Perl and Ruby are both extensively used scripting languages that are applied in a wide scope of modern software applications. Applications that use Perl are Amazon.com, TicketMaster.com, and Priceline.com. Applications that use Ruby are Twitter.com, YellowPages.com, and LivingSocial.com. The purpose of discussing these languages is two-fold. First, the available quantitative comparison of these languages is limited. This paper provides essential quantitative as well as qualitative analysis that can be used as a tool for future references. Secondly, this work was performed as a trade study for the implementation of a real world database application known as PennData SpecEd Application. PennData SpecEd is used to collect records of special education students from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania student census. This comparative study focuses first on the performance and ease of programming software components using object oriented features of both Perl and Ruby. In addition to the SpecEd application, several variants of sorting, searching, and text manipulations are written in both languages and benchmarked to understand the performance benefits of either language. While this is not an exhaustive study of all language features, the analysis offers insight to practitioners seeking to understand the applicability of the two languages in their own applications.