From: Florian Gross <flgr@...>
Date: 2005-01-20T02:16:09+09:00
Subject: Re: value by reference

trans. wrote:

>>sorry if this offends, but there is no less blunt way to say it.
>>if anyone need it. they've gone wrong already.
>>the solution: design
> That's silly. By that line of reasoning, nearly every other language
> has got it wrong. Wrong must be pretty good since Ruby is no where near
> as popular as those languages that can do this sort of thing.

No, other languages use other models that need this. They don't work 
like Ruby which is why they need it. Ruby needs other features that 
those languages don't have in certain cases, but over all I have to say 
that Ruby did a good job at being simple and consistent which is one of 
the top reasons I like it so much. Everything just makes sense once you 
understand the basics.

There's multiple approaches to this, but they should not be mixed.

> I think the problem with Ruby is that it _can be done_ if you use
> certain _types_ of objects, but not others. That to me goes against the
> feather of our friendly duck.

No, it can not be done. You can never modify a variable that appeared in 
your method invocation. You can change the Objects that you're methods 
gets in case they are value Objects, but that's how OOP works. It makes 
sense to be able to have entities that can change their state at run time.