From: Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown@...>
Date: 2006-01-09T08:04:27+09:00
Subject: Re: Ideas on "Why Living Dangerous can be A Good Thing" in Ruby?

On 1/8/06, Steve Litt <slitt@earthlink.net> wrote:

> If someone can show me an advantage to adding methods and instance variables
> in real time, and that advantage can't be realized with normal OOP
> techniques, I'll keep an open mind. But unless it offers me a unique benefit
> that I need, I wouldn't do it.

Well, that's kind of what this whole thread is about.  There are a lot
of really great ruby applications that take advantage of this kind of
dynamicity, and we're trying to come up with a decent explanation of
exactly that... why it's advantageous. But...

> It's easy to use Ruby in a manner that respects encapsulation and a known
> state, and if used that way, I'll leave my goggles at home :-)

This is a good point.  The language doesn't force you to go
willy-nilly.  It just grants you that freedom, which can be VERY nice,
if you know what you're doing.