From: "trans." <tsawyer@...>
Date: 2005-01-20T03:36:16+09:00
Subject: Re: value by reference

> It also has NOTHING to do with duck-typing or POLS.
> Stop misusing those terms.

Never mentioned POLS. As for ducky nature, I'm simply referring to it
by analogy. Can I not make an analogy? (Is it that you don't understand
my analogy. Do I need to explain it better? If so I'm sorry for not
explaining better.)

Personally, I think you all get too worked up over it. I know how it
works, you don't need to explain it for the millionth time (at least
not to me). I wouldn't recommend being steamed about explaining it to a
newbie either, that's enevitable, and will just chase them away.

Someone mentioned performance to which I say: performace isn't
everything. Having the _option_ doesn't hurt anything in the way of
performance here either.

Bad design? Maybe. But encasulating control doesn't seem bad to me.
Lets say I have list and I pass that list to an object via
#put_you_thing_on_the_list, is that bad design? If not, why is asking
it to #put_your_number_in_my_variable so bad?

Personally I am of the opinion that programmers should be allowed to
program their way. If you constrain them b/c it isn't "proper" we may
never discover new interesting ways to do things never before
considered.

Having said that, I personally like the more obvious consitentcy that
comes form pure by-ref or by-val, and the choices offered by VB.net,
rather then Ruby's sole by-ref-to-val. But in either case, in practice
it is only occasionally an issue, and there are too many other things
to like about Ruby to overly worry about it.

BTW this is why I started the suby-ruby mailing list. To talk about
potentialites; to ask _what-if_ Ruby were like such and such --simple
exploration and expression of opinions. For some reason, when ever
these kinds of things come up on ruby-talk there is odd defensives that
goes up as if the crown jewels were in peril.

Personally I'm just express my likes and dislikes --regardles of how it
might work. Then attempt to understand the full ramifications,
disadvantage and advantage, of all approaches.