From: Richard Dale <Richard_Dale@...>
Date: 2004-08-19T23:40:59+09:00
Subject: Re: Coming from Ruby (was: Re: When to use parentheses around method args?)

David A. Black wrote:

> Richard, I certainly don't mean to jump down your throat.��For�some
> reason the spirit happens to move me at this moment to comment on this
> in some depth.��I've�spent�almost�four�years�listening�to�people�talk
> about "coming from Java" and "being used to Perl" and so on, as
> rationales for both unconventional stylistic practices and language
> change requests.��Sticking�just�to�the�former�for�the�moment:�I
> believe that Matz and his colleagues came up with something really
> elegant-looking and consistent as they developed traditional Ruby
> style.��I�think�it's�a�pity�to�take�the�style�apart�and�reassemble�it
> based on isolated decisions about small subsets of it -- especially
> when those decisions are made on the basis of practices and
> conventions from other languages.
I agree with you entirely - it's up to me to find out about idioms that the
communitity use, rather than suggest they adopt strange foreign ideas from
other languages. 

One thing that pains me slightly about the 'Groovy' language is that they
think 'javans' can't learn ruby because it has insufficient curly brackets,
and therefore they have to re-invent the wheel.