Austin Ziegler
10/3/2003 10:02:00 PM
On Sat, 4 Oct 2003 06:09:23 +0900, why the lucky stiff wrote:
> On Friday 03 October 2003 02:20 pm, paul vudmaska wrote:
>> I'd probably fall into the 'programmatic idealistic' side. I wont
>> boast more than a month's or so experience with Ruby so i
>> probably should not have started the thread.
> Heya, thanks for the thread. I think your willingness to jump into
> conversation on the list despite your newness to Ruby is really
> cool. Sure, there's dissenting opinions. You have your own vision
> for how you'd like to use the language and what the potential
> future for the language could be. I'm sure continued thought will
> yield good things.
I concur. I know that one of my first posts (if not my first post)
to ruby-talk was also a discussion about language features
[ruby-talk:42410], specifically returning the RHS of a test because
everything except false and nil is true. There are some times when I
still think that it's a good idea (nothing is equal to nil,
including nil), but given that others (and myself, sometimes) want
to see #nil_or_empty?, it's not something I'd push for at this
point.
> Don't regret the discussion. Some say there's too much banter and
> volume on the list, but at the same time we measure Ruby's success
> by the volume on the list.
Volume? What volume? (Okay, so it's around 3,000 messages monthly.)
>> 1) e4x wont be the only language that attempts to fold xml into
>> it natively. It is in the evolutionary path of any general
>> purpose language, imo
> I think ideas like this could be experimented with outside of core.
> Meaning: someone with the can-do spirit checks out Ruby from CVS and
> hacks away. An idea like this could be more convincing if available as a
> set of patches or alternative interpreter (such as Stackless Python).
> Sounds similiar to e4x already, eh?
I think that the confusion, here, is what is meant by "fold XML into
it natively." That's really why I posted my longer analysis of where
something like e4x is going to turn problematic. I mean ... XSLT
*is* XML and it's got problems with the complexity of possible XML
documents. There are good arguments for permitting attributes, but
if the XML committee had gotten rid of attributes, that would have
significantly simplified what can be programmed around them, because
then XML documents would be purely hierarchical in nature and it
would be trivial to extend languages to support this sort of
behaviour.
> It'd be great if everyone in our community accepted everyone and
> every idea that was presented (a wealth of endless backslapping
> that began to take its toll on our shoulder blades), but I think
> chipping away at an idea will enhance it. Anyways, the idea has
> merit and I'd love to see some working ideas that ensure the
> implosion of my brain.
I'm not sure that Paul's suggestion is something that will actually
be useful as a "core feature" in Ruby, in the end, because of the
complexity of XML, but it may help refine the REXML interface (or
provide yet another), and I would agree with James Britt that that
might be a better place to discuss this.
-austin
--
austin ziegler * austin@halostatue.ca * Toronto, ON, Canada
software designer * pragmatic programmer * 2003.10.03
* 17.47.49