From: bertrandmuscle@...
Date: 2005-03-30T06:29:47+09:00
Subject: Re: ! haphazard

>>but for myself and perhaps many other users it comes down to how 
>>intuitive the language is. from this perspective: if sort! works, 
>>sort_by! should also.
>>
>>one of the things that drew me to ruby recently was this philosophy, but 
>>there have been some off-putting inconsistencies.
> 
> 
> There is no substitute for understanding what the algorithm is doing
> and the efficiency implications...  it is not about intuition or
> consistency.  It might be about documentation.

I don't agree with this statement. This would be true, perhaps, if the 
!bang method was some kind of loaded module and not part of the core 
language. The essence of the language itself should be consistent beyond 
anything else.