From: dblack@...
Date: 2006-07-09T07:31:44+09:00
Subject: Re: Alternative to the Symbol#to_proc hack

Hi --

On Sun, 9 Jul 2006, Ashley Moran wrote:

>
> On Jul 08, 2006, at 9:05 pm, dblack@wobblini.net wrote:
>
>> Of course, I'm hopelessly non-edge -- I actually think that:
>>
>>  %w{i am an array}.map {|item| item.upcase }
>> 
>> is logical, reads nicely left to right, and contains no line noise :-)
>
> True, but that only makes Java look old-fashioned.  I wanted to make Ruby 
> look old-fashioned ;o)

Hmmmm... I'm still rather fond of Ruby, I have to admit :-)

> Ever since I read about Higher-Order Messages at 
> http://nat.truemesh.com/archives/000537.html I've been determined to find a 
> way to write plain English as valid Ruby code.  My goal is to find a neat way 
> to express business rules in Ruby, with as little framework coding as 
> possible.  I think it may take a *little* more than extending the String 
> class though!

Beware the dot, though.  It can give you English, but at the expense
of Ruby style.  When I see:

   x = half.of.the.first.item.in(container)

I want to know, and understand, what the message "the" means to the
return value of a call to "of" -- and it isn't easy.  Of course it's
all legal Ruby, and can be documented... but it really sails beyond
the horizon of what i would consider reasonable use of method-call
syntax.  In fact it's often a case of method-call syntax being used
for method-*name* semantics.


David

-- 
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  Complete foreword & sample chapters at http://www.manning.com/black!