[ruby-talk:16173] Re: The Block Problem -A suggestion

In [ruby-talk:16172], Chris Moline <[e-mail]> wrote:
> It has the advantage that it's less ambiguous. We can define a
> one-line method without needing to use empty brackets or a statement
> delimiter. It's also a good looking alternative to those angle
> brackets and it shouldn't be too much trouble to update older files to
> this new style. 

The biggest problem that I have with this is that the syntax is surprising.  One of the principles that drew me to ruby is that much of it appears to be designed based on the principle of least surprise.  I realize that there are some problems in the language (like the one you are addressing here), but using square brackets for method arguments and -> for array/hash extraction is something that (IMHO) most programmers would see and think, "huh?"  Also, that change would surely break any existing scripts out there since methods and array/hash extraction are two extremely commonly used features.

Henry.