Re: [PATCH] lambda with normal block syntax

On May 26, 2008, at 2:59 PM, David Flanagan wrote:

> That is, Matz introduced the -> syntax in mid-2005. There were two  
> years and five months for discussion of the feature.  And then 1.9.0  
> was released at the end of 2007.  It seems to me that that should be  
> the end.
>
> Matz is Ruby's benevolent dictator. He's a smart guy and he's put a  
> lot of thought into this. If you like the language he created,  
> you've got to trust his ideas about good syntax. (As an aside, I  
> wonder whether the Japanese developers on the ruby-dev mailing list  
> give Matz as much grief as we seem to here :-)
>
> My understanding is that 1.9.0 is headed, relatively quickly, toward  
> a stable 1.9.1 release.  If we really don't think that -> is the  
> optimum lambda syntax, it seems to me that we should wait until the  
> 2.0 development tree opens.

I disagree strongly. This is the period where we can actually use 1.9  
for real work--until recently it really wasn't the case. And now,  
having used it, we're finding rough edges, and we're suggesting changes.

Look at the length of this thread, and the near universal dislike of - 
 >. Given that passion, and given that 1.9 is still fluid, what better  
time is there to discuss it? Surely making it a part of 1.9.1, which  
is considered stable, will make it a lot _harder_ to discuss and  
change, and will give Matz far more grief in terms of change.

1.9 was released to promote discussion. That's what we're doing. We  
can both update our books as needed when the dust settles :)



Dave