From: Lothar Scholz Date: 2004-09-16T09:08:17+09:00 Subject: Re: Ex-Perl coders: Howz it feel to convert to Ruby? Hello ChrisO, I agree with Phil that the unspecified parameters is one of the worst things in Perl. C> But aside from the undisciplined uses you've pointed out as reason for C> eshewing this in Perl, I have to wholy stand by the amazing power this C> feature brings. It far outweighs the negatives. It's one of the C> "genius" things about Perl. (Always educational, however, to get C> someone else's opposite point of view, as you have offered.) I don't care if you are disciplined enough and can do nice hacks with this "genius" things. Software is written and maintained by a lot of different people. If you have to read other persons source code you are normally lost. I have once seen the argument that a brush shouldn't restrict the work of painter, and so a language shouldn't restrict the work of a "genius" programmer but i don't agree with this. Enforcing styles is good and more productive in the long run. C> And to bring this Perl discussion back on topic, in line with your C> dislike of this "feature" in Perl, am I not correct in understanding C> that in Ruby, one can create methods on the fly in a class? How is this C> that much different (conceptually) than unspecified parameters in a Perl C> subroutine? How do you know what methods are there (aside from using C> the inspection methods available to every class [unless I am mistaken in C> this regard]). The difference is that the Ruby method is only used in very very special cases and should not be seen a good style of programming without good reasons. I think the TK bindings source code is a good example to not use this feature. But the perl solution is something that you must use all the time. So you can't compare the two cases. -- Best regards, emailto: scholz at scriptolutions dot com Lothar Scholz http://www.ruby-ide.com CTO Scriptolutions Ruby, PHP, Python IDE 's