Hal E. Fulton
12/2/2003 10:11:00 PM
David A. Black wrote:
>>>I really don't understand this. You won't use Ruby b/c it has some EXTRA
>>>Perl-like features?
>>
>>Yes, that's right.
>>
>>Elegance, simplicity, clarity -- the things that (IMO) are necessary for a
>>language to have that "effortless" feeling -- are dependent (among other
>>things) on a reasonably complete absence of clutter and other warts.
>>
>>For *me* the stuff starting on p216 of the pickaxe is a long list of warts. (I
>>emphasise that I'm not knocking Ruby; it's just that its current form is
>>optimised for use in a certain way -- shortish scripts -- that I'm not
>>interested in, and so those features of the language add clutter without
>>providing compensating value.)
>
>
> You can write short programs in Ruby, but it's not optimized one way
> or the other in that regard. Speed can be an issue, but there's
> nothing whatsoever in Ruby's syntax or design to stop one from writing
> longer programs. (Rich Kilmer and Dave Thomas among others can bear
> witness to this :-) In sum, Ruby is a nice general-purpose programming
> language; it's not an admin-script niche tool.
My only comment in favor of what the OP says is this.
When I say "Perlisms" I'm chiefly talking about the
ugly variables such as $/ and $whatever (and the
special behaviors associated with them).
I don't like the Perlisms and I don't use them. (Note
how rarely they appear in _The Ruby Way_.) So far, so
good.
But what if I have to read the code of someone else who
uses them? For me, that's a negative.
Another more subtle negative is: The presence of the
support for the Perlisms increases the complexity of
the interpreter, possibly making it slower or less
maintainable.
As always, Matz is boss. Whatever he puts in or leaves
out, I will get used to it and probably even like it.
Hal