From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2001-06-01T10:19:27+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:16105] Re: Block arguments vs method arguments

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Guillaume Cottenceau <gc@mandrakesoft.com>
To: ruby-talk ML <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2001 1:38 PM
Subject: [ruby-talk:16090] Re: Block arguments vs method arguments


> Hey! -- If I count right, 4 persons (Sean Russell, Hal E. Fulton, Dan
> Moniz and Mirian Crzig Lennox) all bold out that for cosmetic reasons or
> fear of change, they don't like the <..> syntax. Wait, no flame but isn't
> there reasons more important than that?
> 
> We should underline for example that the <..> thingy fixing up the
> problems with local variables not being local is a great step forward for
> Ruby!

True, but let's improve the semantics without injecting too much noise
into the language.

"If you think notation doesn't matter, try doing long division in 
Roman numerals."

It's amazing how "visually clean" Ruby is. If we had a required semicolon
at the end of a statement, line continuation would be more intuitive; but
it isn't worth it! The eyeball trips over the semicolons.

The <> thing would be an "Evelyn Wood speed bump" for me (and some
others, I'll bet).

And suppose you have fiv variables (passed in order, as with an iterator)
and the even numbered ones need this special syntax:

   my_method  { |a| <b> |c| <d> |e|   do_some_stuff() }

Oh, how lovely.

Hal