[ruby-core:19439] Re: Now that lambda has more powerful arguments...

I acknowledge the long discussion on this topic which has already
taken place,

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-core/16611

In general I try to refrain from posting when there is little to add
which could be construed as useful.  However a full-fledged lambda is
new and surprising information to me, and seems to render that whole
discussion practically obsolete.

Per these comments,

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-core/16671
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-core/16742

I had previously believed ->(){} was a necessary evil due to parsing
ambiguities in lambda { |a = 1, b = 2| ... }.

But as it stands now, the only remaining justification for -> which
I've found is matz' comment,

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-core/16732

> Personally, I am pretty well satisfied with current ->.  In
> addition, if both Ruby and Perl6 have it (in same syntax), it will
> soon have large mind share in the dynamic language "market".

OK, there is no arguing with being satisfied.  But a Perl6 argument?
Involving mindshare?  As far as I can tell, the number Perl6 users is
minuscule, and will foreseeably be so.  I personally don't know anyone
who uses or plans to use Perl6.

Going back to Dave Thomas' argument which kicked off the thread,

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-core/16611

Ruby should not choose a syntax which would immediately cause a
functional programmer's head to shake.  Haskell, Erlang, Clean, OCaml,
ML, and several others use -> as an infix operator.

Ruby's choice of -> is conceptually incompatible with these languages.
A weak analogy would be to imagine a rubyist looking upon a language
which uses "," to represent a lambda.

With the explosion of multi-core CPUs, functional programming will
probably become more important.  If mindshare is an argument at all,
it should be aimed at functional programmers, not Perl6 programmers.

There are now a couple Ruby packages which make it easy to do
multi-core parallel computations with functional programming in Ruby.
Sorry for the plug, but the reason I mention it is to emphasize that
Ruby is not isolated from the functional world.  Functional concepts
are relevant and important, and Ruby should not be unduly offensive to
those familiar with them via common functional languages.

James M. Lawrence