From: Markus <markus@...>
Date: 2004-10-16T00:41:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Eating sandwiches in the park

On Fri, 2004-10-15 at 08:27, James Britt wrote:

> I spent a bit of time trying to create a good but short example of truly 
> wack Ruby code.  Given that you can override core classes and methods, 
> it is fairly easy to create code that bears only a superficial 
> resemblance to Ruby, requiring the user to think  instead in a new, 
> Bizarro world mini-language.  It requires nothing that doesn't already 
> exist in Ruby.  Yet one does not often see this sort of code in the wild.

     You see it (at least I do) but you don't recognize it as "a new,
Bizarro world mini-language."  Why?  Because it's almost always done in
the context of some problem domain that already supports it (sometimes
with a history far predating ruby, or even computers).  Thus anyone who
knows the language easily switches gears without even noticing.

> Truth is, the cat's out of the bag, the genie is out of the bottle, and 
> the poop is out of the mouse.  As new changes to the mallardability of 
> Ruby are suggested, the question is not whether we want people to be 
> able to do odd, weird, convoluted things; they already can.  The 
> question is will the changes enable or encourage odd, weird, convoluted 
> things that are indeed appropriate for a given task.

     Exactly.

> "Ruby: MPS-free for over 10 years!"

    *laugh/gack*  Not another TLA!

        -- Markus