From: Hal Fulton <hal9000@...>
Date: 2005-08-05T22:09:08+09:00
Subject: Re: new block notation (was: Re: ruby-dev summary 26468-26661)

James F. Hranicky wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Aug 2005 09:49:28 +0900
> Florian Gro� <florgro@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>I'm probably not in the position to criticize, but I still feel like I 
>>have to or I will regret not having done it later.
> 
> 
> I'm just going to throw in that when I first found Ruby I was so excited 
> about how close to perfect it was that I wanted to perfect it further.
> 
> Now, however, I'd be happy to have the syntax stay the same as 1.8 from
> here on out and hope that work on future versions would be concentrated
> on the backend, improving speed and supporting native threads for example.
> 
> The arrow syntax is making me nervous. I say let's don't let the Perfect
> be the enemy of the Really Damn Good.

Yes, thank you, I agree.

I'm not opposed to minor syntax changes aong the way, but in my opinion
the benefits have to be very significant in relation to the "size" of
the change.

I have two language changes that I favor, a syntactic change I consider
minor and a semantic change that would break no code.

Other than that, I'm all in favor of improvement and expansion -- native
threads, a VM, more libs, and so on.

But Ruby should be changed the way it has for the last twelve years --
conservatively and carefully.

If the changes had been controlled less tightly five or six years ago,
then today we wouldn't have the Ruby we have now. We would have a
bizarre cross between Perl and APL.


Hal