[ruby-talk:10027] Re: Ruby refs on Slashdot

David Alan Black <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>On Sun, 28 Jan 2001, Ben Tilly wrote:
>
> > David Alan Black <[e-mail]> wrote:
> > >
> > >Yes -- I certainly don't dismiss everything he said; it's more that a
> > >couple of things caught my attention as being in the category of "OK,
> > >now let's see how well Ruby has captured the functionality and flavor
> > >of Perl."  Not that I don't expect language comparisons.  But that's
> > >not exactly what this is.  It's more like an obstacle people seem to
> > >put in their own way, by assuming that Ruby's goal is to shadow Perl.
> > >Again, not to pounce on that one writer, but something like: "I'll
> > >have delve deeper to see how well they copied the TMTOWTDI philosophy"
> > >contains a whole set of presuppositions about Ruby which are going to
> > >make the process of *seeing* Ruby (not even understanding it, or
> > >liking it, but just perceiving it) much more difficult.
> >
> > Well then what is Ruby?
> >
> > Is it one easily describable thing?  Is there a clear Ruby
> > style that is truly right?
> >
> > I doubt that...
>
>I didn't say that there isn't more than one way to do this or that in
>Ruby.  (Self-evidently there often is.)  I'm talking more about public
>perception and rhetoric than language design and philosophy, at the
>moment.

OK...

>In fact... forget that this case involves TMTOWTDI.  Given *any* Perl
>functionality or philosophy/slogan P, to think out loud about "how
>well [Matz] copied [P]" suggests (a) that Matz was trying to copy P,
>and (b) that one's opinion of Ruby should at least partly be
>determined by how good that copy-job was.  That strikes me as a
>low-percentage process (even if one comes up with a nicer word than
>"copy" :-)

But Matz was, by his own admission, copying from Perl
as one of his sources.  Admittedly, it would be a
serious mistake to determine your opinion of Ruby
entirely from how well he copied, but it is IMHO
completely fair to judge the success of his borrowing
what he wanted to borrow from Perl.

In fact Larry Wall's understanding of why Perl is so
good at the set of scripting and glue problems that
people set it to is intertwined with the kinds of
syntax that he has in the language.  Matz clearly
thinks that the two are not tightly interconnected
and has tried to separate them.

It would be quite unfair IMNSHO to not comment on
whether or not Matz is correct.

>All I'm saying is that I have observed that people get tripped up by
>this -- tripped up in the sense of prevented (at least temporarily)
>from seeing the things that Ruby can actually do.

You never start from a blank slate.  Given a list of
features very few if any people can immediately see
the implications.  So you start with seeing how to do
what you know and then branch out from there.

>The "#{...}" interpolation mechanism is a good example.  I've seen a
>number of people, familiar with Perl, assume that this is strictly the
>equivalent of "$var"-style interpolation in Perl.  They then perceive,
>incorrectly, Ruby's interpolation mechanism as having "extra"
>punctuation characters.  (The slashdot piece we've been talking about
>did this, in so many words ["I can see the extra characters getting
>annoying"], but I've seen it elsewhere too.)

It does more.  True.  But what is the most common use?
Inserting variables!

More saliently, there is no clear syntactic way in Ruby
to tell variables, keywords, and method calls apart.  I
am interested in seeing how this plays out over time.

>Once these people realize that #{...} is not (just) for variable
>interpolation, they not only stop worrying about the "extra"
>characters but actually feel relieved that they don't have to do
>"@{[ $x + $y ]}" and such things.

Personally I always used "...".($x + $y)."..." for that.
Conceptually far simpler and almost as few characters.
Another neat trick I have seen is to tie a hash and use
that.

But even so my most common use is inserting a variable,
and needing to use the {} is an irritant.  It would be
only syntactic sugar, but I would like to see #foo be
interpolated as #{foo}.

>I'm not taking people to task for lack of sharpness.  (That would come
>back to haunt me in short order :-)  Nor is it such a calamity if this
>or that person has to work through a layer or two of Perl perception
>before seeing Ruby for itself.  (I certainly did.)  Obviously Ruby
>occurs at a certain point in history, with a manifestly huge relation
>to several antecedents.

How many people still program Perl 5 as if it was Perl 4?

>In fact, judging from what people said in response to my original
>question, it really probably isn't a big deal, from the perspective of
>Ruby advocacy, that these misperceptions are played out in public, as
>long as people do keep really getting interested in the language and
>giving it a more than perfunctory look.  It would be better, I
>suppose, if that could happen without the detours, but realistically
>that may not be possible.

I think that the fact that people can draw such parallels
is a Good Thing.  If the syntax was different enough that
they couldn't, people wouldn't look at the language.

>(Anyone interested in some very interesting and well-stated remarks
>about Perl and Ruby should have a look at [ruby-talk:6738] from
>Clemens Hintze.)

Geez, after marking the twain Clemens' around here, I
thought it would be perfect if there was a Samuel
Longhorn as well... (-: *sorry!* :-))

>David
>
>P.S. Congratulations on your 10K-hood!

That was an accident. :-)

Cheers,
Ben
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