From: Peter Wright <pete@...>
Date: 2006-01-12T21:08:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Ideas on "Why Living Dangerous can be A Good Thing" in Ruby?

Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/8/06, James Britt <james_b@neurogami.com> wrote:

> > > This of course, has many benefits, but the bottom line is that
> > > Java was built with a security model to prevent things like
> > > this, while ruby was built to be open from the ground up to
> > > facilitate this.
> >
> > Prevent what? One can build twisty, loopy, self-modifying code in
> > Java, too.  It's just painful; maybe that's part of The Plan.

> Though that's funny, I really think it was part of the plan for
> Java.  They made no attempt to make doing it convenient or useful
> (though that can be said for a lot of Java things), which is part of
> the way they can discourage developers from being 'wild and crazy'

....which is all part of the appealing-to-management[0] concept of
programmers as being generic-and-replaceable cogs in the project
development wheel.

If programmers have too much (ie. any) ability to be "wild and crazy"
(== creative), that could be considered as dangerous to project
"integrity".

Of course, the sad thing is that there's some truth in that. And much
like knowledge, a little truth (especially when taken out of context)
is a dangerous thing. :)

> > There is no inherent security from code that is too clever for its
> > own good.

> That's true.  We are really addressing the illusion of security.  Or
> at least a superficial level of security.  I think a lot of people
> are just scared by how damn convenient and common such practices are
> in Ruby, even if their language is capable of doing similar things.

I think it's part of the old no-such-thing-as-a-free-lunch notion.
Some people (and they're not necessarily stupid people) have trouble
with a concept like "Ruby is just a better and more powerful language
than Java". They presume that there _has_ to be a cost for that extra
power.

And the idea that you pay for extra power by losing "safety" (whatever
"safety" means in this context) is a seductive one, because it has so
many physical-world parallels. Though it's dreadfully simplistic at
best (and just plain wrong at worst).

So... just about any management will read "increasing power" as
"losing safety" which translates to "increasing _risk_" and
INCREASING RISK IS BAD so no Ruby/Python/Smalltalk/Lisp for you,
heathen. Get back to being an indistinguishable cog in the low-risk,
industry-best-practice[1] Java machine!

Ahem. Not that I'm venting or anything. :)

Pete.

[0] I know, I know. Not _all_ managment. But definitely some.

[1] Where industry-best-practice => what-everyone-else-is-doing
    => if-everyone-else-is-doing-it-I-can't-be-blamed-if-it-fails-,
    because-I-didn't-choose,-the-_industry_-did. :)
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