From: Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@...>
Date: 2008-02-29T11:19:01+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] MacRuby

On 2/28/08, Richard Kilmer <rich@infoether.com> wrote:
>
>  On Feb 28, 2008, at 7:44 PM, Evan Phoenix wrote:

>  > At one point, I had a small parser change that allowed this to be
>  > written as:
>  >
>  > O[duck foo: 1, bar: 2]
>  >
>  > The idea was that the rubinius compiler would detect this special
>  > form and emit the 'right thing'.
>  >
>  > I think a bit part of this is whether you expect users (and other
>  > code) to know they're calling out to Objective-C, or if you want
>  > tight integration. This is essential what matz says.
>  >
>  > By making special Objective-C syntax, then you can't pass in an
>  > Objective-C object and expect it to be duck-typed like normal ruby
>  > objects. But the trade off is that the syntax is less elegant. I
>  > think it's a trade off, and my 2 cents is you should opt for the
>  > more elegant syntax. This is because there are only a few tiny edge
>  > cases where the Objective-C selector matches the ruby selector,
>  > where you'd want to allow the ObjC object to be duck typed as
>  > something else.
>
>
> So in your view:
>
>
>         O[duck foo:1, bar:2]
>
>
> is elegant?  Elegant Ruby? no.  I agree to opt for the elegant syntax
>  and that's:
>
>
>         duck foo:1, bar:2

Or

          duck foo: 1 bar: 2

which is even more elegant, since it's the same syntax as Smalltalk <G>

Somehow I feel like I'm back in late 1981 or early 1982,  when Brad
Cox and Tom Love at ITT, I at IBM, and probably others, had read the
August 1981 issue of Byte magazine and were trying independently to
graft Smalltalk onto C independently.  Brad, Tom and I later became
friends when we met, but Objective-C certainly outlived ClassC which
never really got any visibility outside of Big Blue.

More seriously, I tend to lean on the side of making things like the
objective-c/ruby interface a little more visibility, since I've
learned that transparency isn't always what it's cracked up to be.
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/articles/2007/11/17/cool-but-stupid-things-ive-done

-- 
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/