From: Ashley Moran <work@...>
Date: 2006-07-09T10:41:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Alternative to the Symbol#to_proc hack


On Jul 08, 2006, at 11:31 pm, dblack@wobblini.net wrote:

> 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

That's a good point I hadn't considered. I don't know what to think  
really.  On the one had, I like code that is readable in the sense  
that you can see what it does; on the other, I like to read code  
where I can see *how it does it*.  I think the former usually wins  
though, or we'd all be programming in assembly.

Rails has got a lot of people using Ruby tricks that they don't fully  
understand (eg collecting hashes and arrays in method definitions).   
We're just starting to use it where I work, and first developer has  
had to dive in and use Rails with only a token understanding of  
Ruby.  (Maybe I'm just weird - I prefer to understand how singleton  
classes and method rewriting work before I go headfirst into crazy  
stuff like Hello World!)

It's good that Ruby can be made so readable that you don't *need* to  
understand it in depth to do useful stuff, but I think it will be the  
undoing of many a newbie as they move to more ambitious projects.   
I'm crossing my fingers that Rails doesn't become to web database  
apps what Access is to desktop database apps! (What a terrible  
thought to go to bed on...)

Ashley