From: Lothar Scholz <mailinglists@...>
Date: 2004-08-28T18:55:55+09:00
Subject: Re: Typos (Was: performance comparison)

Hello Gavin,

GS> Whenever there's a complex-ish piece of Ruby code I have to do (i.e.
GS> susceptible to subtle mistakes and/or unlikely to work first time), I
GS> develop it in IRB.  Just copy and paste the code into IRB, set up some
GS> context (initial data), and run and edit until it works.  It then gets
GS> copied into the program with confidence.  That only feels like one
GS> "cycle" - an illusion, perhaps, but a useful one.

I think it is better to start with test cases and improve small programs
then doing a try and error way in the console.

And a huge problem is that copying code fragments into IRB is easy but
if you want to get some code you typed in IRB multiple lines) getting
this back to the editor is much more difficult.

GS> Some people are very good at programming in dynamic languages.  You
GS> get better with practice.  The difference is that the practice is
GS> enjoyable :)

But to be honest i think the most people using script languages are
not very good programmers. This has to do that they are very good
beginner languages for non technical persons who wants to see results
instead of learning a theory first.

But seeing results immediately make it a lot more difficult to think
about special conditions and error handlings. Adding this skills later
is much more difficult. So i can understand that a lot of universities
start teaching functional strong typed languages.


-- 
 Best regards,                        emailto: scholz at scriptolutions dot com
 Lothar Scholz                        http://www.ruby-ide.com
 CTO Scriptolutions                   Ruby, PHP, Python IDE 's