From: Bill Kelly <billk@...>
Date: 2004-06-29T04:09:37+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Is it considered Harmful?

Hi,

I'm responding because I think there might be a genuine
misunderstanding here.  (Or maybe the misunderstanding
will turn out to be mine.)

In any case -

From: "Sean O'Dell" <sean@celsoft.com>
> On Monday 28 June 2004 01:33, ts wrote:
> > >>>>> "S" == Sean O'Dell <sean@celsoft.com> writes:
> >
> > S> I did it, and it worked like I said it could.  I didn't say Matz would
> > accept S> it or want it.  In fact, I know from looking at the Ruby
> > internals it would S> be very hard to make totally stable, so I wouldn't
> > want it accepted myself,
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > S> not until a lot of code was bullet-proofed internally.
> >
> > S> So, I'm not sure what your point is.  Are you annoyed that it worked?
> >                                                               ^^^^^^^^^
> >  no comment
>
> I'm going to ask this one time, and please everyone forgive me for going 
> off-topic, but could you leave out the personal stuff when we're talking 
> about Ruby?  You and Ziegler both have a habit of being very nasty with me.  
> Let's discuss Ruby without the personal nastiness, could we?

When I read Guy's response, I interpreted it as calling attention
to two peoples' differing notions of what "it worked" would mean
in this context.  Not as a personal attack, but rather...

 Guy: It doesn't "work" because you can trivially crash Ruby with
      just changing an Array's class to a Hash. etc. etc. etc.
      [Guy has understood this from the start and has been saying,
      ergo, the criteria for "working" has not been satisfied.]

 Sean: My hack functioned the way I expected it to, therefore,
       even though it's not totally stable and I wouldn't want
       it accepted by matz, "it worked".

This is why--to me--what Guy wrote does not register as a personal
attack.  You both have different criteria for what constitutes
"it working".

Oddly, Sean, when you are saying, "it worked like I said it could",
I am hearing Guy saying, "yes - but it doesn't work like I said it
wouldn't."

:)

Anyway - dunno if that helps or hinders... but that is how I
am reading both sides' positions...


Regards,

Bill