[NCLUG] Looking at programming languages...

[Chad Perrin]

On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 03:19:47PM -0700, Sean Reifschneider wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 01:21:57PM -0700, Chad Perrin wrote:
> >The syntax is beautiful.  You just need to get into its mindset -- just
> 
> The biggest problem I had when learning Ruby was the lack of parens in the
> examples of function calls.  In Ruby you can leave out the parens if it's
> obvious what is what.  However, when I read these I always found that I
> would go "WTF?" and have to go through and figure out what it really meant.
> 
> Maybe that's just me, but I found that the lack of parens got quite in the
> way of trying to learn it by example.  This isn't really a language
> problem, except that the language allows it.  This is more a problem I had
> with the Ruby examples.

Yeah -- not a language problem.  It's a language feature that you don't
have to use.

I think there are a fair number of Rubyists out there that make too much
use of the feature, and it's kind of a shame that's so.  It can improve
readability, but one must be a disciplined programmer to be able to use
it to good effect that way.  An undisciplined programmer can screw up the
readability of *any* language.


> 
> Ruby, in general, I think is a good language.  If Python didn't exist, I'd
> almost certainly be using Ruby instead.

Even though Ruby *does* exist, I may end up learning Python to a level of
actual competence at some point -- so I know how you feel.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Kent Beck: "I always knew that one day Smalltalk would replace Java.  I
just didn't know it would be called Ruby."