[ruby-talk:16308] Re: Strange idea... exporting from a scope

>===== Original Message From Dave Thomas <[e-mail]> =====
>"Benjamin J. Tilly" <[e-mail]> writes:
>
>> I write a lot of Perl.  I have seen Smalltalk but not programmed in
>> it extensively.  I do not know what you mean by, "as you'd write
>> Perl" or "as you'd write Smalltalk".  Both languages support many
>> styles and I believe that the style someone chooses has more to do
>> with the programmer than the language.  Which means that I don't
>> know what style you expect people to associate with each.
>
>Whoa :)
>
>I wasn't being nasty about Perl style, nor about Smalltalk style. I
>_was_ observing that there's a difference between the style you use in
>the two. In Smalltalk, you don't think twice about writing lots and
>lots of small classes. With the best will in the world, the inertia of
>writing classes in Perl tends to mean I don't write so many.

Well there is a difference in how I think in different
languages.  When I write Ruby I have no real choice but
to use OO simply because other methods of sane code
organization are not as readily available.  In Perl I mix
and match to the domain much more.  I do a lot of simple
modules that optionally export functions in a public API
through Exporter.  I generally prefer working that way.
(I have discussed before how it seems that personality
types seem to correlate with enjoying laying out OO class
hierarchies...)

>Reading my original, I can see why you might think that I was saying
>that all Perl programs were monolithic, but that wasn't my intention.
>I was simply trying to illustrate that languages can suggest a coding
>style.
>
Languages can support styles.  But the capacity to
program in a style depends on the programmer.  I think it
might have been Matt Seargant who memorably said about why
Perl has a maintainability problem, "It is the graduation
from HTML monkey to CGI scripter."

Cheers,
Ben