From: Devin Mullins <twifkak@...>
Date: 2005-12-29T11:32:46+09:00
Subject: Re: Diff of opinion on dynamic stuff

Ian Bicking wrote:

>Austin Ziegler wrote:
>  
>
>>On 28/12/05, Ian Bicking <ianb@colorstudy.com> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Also, to generalize, it seems that the Ruby community is perhaps less
>>>sensitive to code smells or more tollerant of magic compared to the
>>>Python community, which I guess was my larger point.
>>>      
>>>
>>Is it less sensitive to code smells, or is it something that isn't
>>considered a code smell in Ruby? I think that the Ruby community is as
>>.. rough on code smell as any community, but we consider different
>>things smelly than the Python community does.
>>    
>>
>
>It's a little of both -- clearly there's some awareness among Ruby
>programmers that opening classes introduces some possible issues.  And
>the "sharp tools" comments imply that there's potential to cut
>yourself, but people feel that's okay.  There's always a danger to any
>technique; the question is how much danger is okay, depending on how
>complex the problem at hand is.  I get a sense that prevailing opinion
>in the Ruby community accepts a balance with more danger than in
>Python.
>
Well, I can think of two applicable "dangers," off the top of my head: 
the danger of coding the wrong thing (i.e. bugs), and the danger of 
taking to long to do it (i.e. un-maintainability) (and, of course, 
they're related). Many factors play a role in this, including unit 
tests, coding skills, code complexity, the language semantics at hand... 
And I think Rubyists are just tackling those two dangers with a 
different combination of tools than the Pythonistas -- not saying that 
"more danger is okay."

Devin