[ruby-core:39840] Re: Discussion results

I did not have the fortune of attending the discussion, but I would
like to put forth some notions I've had/seen for Ruby 2.0:

1) Go through ActiveSupport core extensions and Ruby Facets to find
most popular and useful methods and port them over. Good examples are
String #indent, #tab, #tabto, #to_h/#to_hash methods, Hash#rekey,
#blank, those have been useful to me. I'm sure others have their own
favorites too --take a poll or do some code analysis to figure out
which ones.

2) Make toplevel a self extended module instead of a weak proxy of
Object. Besides being conceptually easier to understand, it would
allow DSL scripts to run at toplevel without worry of infecting
Object. This would have been a huge boon for me in couple of my
projects, such as my test framework --instead I had to write my own
toplevel-like proxy to fake it, which is inevitably imperfect and just
pain to have to do.

3)  Add margin literal, e.g.

    > %L|This is
        |  margin
        |    controlled.
    => "This is\n  margin\n    controlled."

Nothing sucks more for readability than having to flush a literal
string to the left margin in the middle of indented code.

4) Treat `@` as a hash object, so @['foo'] is the same as @foo. This
would make it much easier to work with instance variables, e.g.
@.each{ |k,v| ... }

5) Better support for lazy and differed processing, e.g. lazy.rb and
denumerable.rb.

6) Add High-order Function to language but more tightly integrated to
remove inefficiencies of pure-Ruby implementation. This is great
device for making robust fluent notations.

7) Lastly, I think serious consideration should be given to removing
the distinction between class and module. The distinction is purely a
conceptual one that has built artificial limitations and undo
complications into the language. What difference does it make to Bar
if we include Bar, subclass Bar or instantiate Bar? Bar shouldn't have
to care --it's just an encapsulation.

Ruby is already an amazing language --standing apart from others in
many ways, and I believe these ideas would help set Ruby even further
afield.

Thanks for the opportunity to provide input into the process.