From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2006-06-11T10:47:18+09:00
Subject: Re: Fun Coding



Elliot Temple wrote:
> ultimately, any technique with unnecessary repetition can get
> frustrating when you know better ways to accomplish the same task.
>
> ruby does a good job of helping us avoid repetition. it's always
> possible in other languages (at least if you count code generators).
> but in ruby it's often convenient. and if you're being paid to do
> something, you have to do it reasonably fast, so you can't write a
> code generator to avoid a little copy/pasting.
>
> also, a lot of us aren't perfect. so we'd like to avoid repetition,
> but don't always know how to, or notice the repetition. ruby helps us
> notice it, and avoid it. sometimes ruby helps us avoid it without even
> noticing anything has happened. this could increase the subjective fun
> factor of ruby, because we find ourselves writing better, DRYer code.
*Somebody* has to do the tedious jobs. Our preference as programmers is
to automate them, of course. I'd like to semi-challenge a couple of your
frames, though:

1. "If you're being paid to do something, you have to do it reasonably
fast." Sure, we have to meet deadlines, but if you can't ask for more
time to get correct results, I don't care what language you're using ...
fun just disappeared by definition.

2. You can usually write a code generator very quickly in almost any
language. Regular expressions make it easier; so do compiler-compilers
if you know how to use them.
> similarly, by being higher level than some languages, ruby sometimes
> helps us to write complex, interesting algorithms.
I think most of today's languages allow recursion, iteration, control
flow, and some form of object-oriented design, although the details of
the object paradigms are widely different in Ruby and, say, R or CLOS.
What I see as Ruby's main advantages are

1. Scripting language features: interpreted, dynamic typing
2. "Conventional" object design paradigms: classes, methods, message-passing
3. Built-in data structuring and regular expression handling.

Perl has 1 and 3 but falls short on 2. Objects were tacked on to Perl
and it shows. Java has 2 and 3 but falls short on 1. R has a little of
1, an unconventional but highly useful (for its domain) set of object
paradigms, and some of 3. C has none of these and C++ only has 2.
> ruby is prettier and less verbose than some languages. hitting extra
> keys on the keyboard is a form of needless work/repetition. pretty and
> elegant code seems fun to me.
There are different kinds of elegance. I find elegance in Forth's
threaded inner interpreter, Lisp's macros, selectors, constructors and
predicates, APL's array orientation, Perl's arrays and hashes, and
*everybody's* garbage collection. And, of course, given how long I've
been programming, I find immense joy in the simple fact that I now have
both upper and lower case letters at my disposal. :)
>
> if we can still read our code a month later, maybe that's fun. if we
> can read our code to our girlfriend because it's so much like English,
> maybe that's fun.
OK ... again it seems that the programming practices and styles are what
makes programming fun or not fun, not the language.

-- 
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

http://linuxcapacityplanning.com