From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2006-05-06T11:26:13+09:00
Subject: Re: Sharp knives and glue



Brian Moelk wrote:
> I'm a Ruby newbie, but having done a bunch of work in other languages, I do
> think you have a point.
>
> OTOH, I think you're exaggerating the extent of the problem.  As others have
> mentioned, various testing practices can mitigate the legitimate issues that
> you put forth.  It's also worth stating, again, that these kinds of problems
> aren't exclusively Ruby's.
>   
"Testing can only show the *presence* of bugs, not their absence." E.W.
Dijkstra

> FWIW, I too don't feel comfortable with changing lower level classes that
> alter "default" behavior, so it would be nice to at least have some easy way
> of detecting if this has occured for the "core" Ruby classes.  Maybe a
> RubyLint?  I see there is CheckR on RubyForge, but it looks to be in the
> very early stages.
>   
I don't feel comfortable in modifying the language at all! I gave up on
Squeak because

1. The user interface was so totally orthogonal to everything I've ever
touched that I didn't see the point in learning it, and

2. It's possible to modify the language, the operating system, the
libraries, *everything*.

-- 
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

http://linuxcapacityplanning.com