From: Charles D Hixson <charleshixsn@...>
Date: 2001-09-03T09:09:53+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:20726] Re: Bruce Eckel's criticism of Ruby

On Thursday 23 August 2001 10:01 pm, you wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Aug 2001 20:43, Erik B?gfors wrote:
> > On 23 Aug 2001 08:30:17 +0900, Stephen White wrote:
> > > On 23 Aug 2001 08:06:01 +0900, Ned Konz wrote:
> > > > Python.org links to
> > > > http://www.mindview.net/Etc/notes.html#Ruby , saying "Bruce
> > > > Eckel thinks Ruby isn't worth learning...".
>
> He is expressing his opinion, here is mine as to why I chose
> Ruby.
>
> As an aside, I have looked around the major scripting languages,
> with Python having more of a look that Perl. I have previously
> written programs in Assembler ( 3 machines ), Algol, Pascal, C,
> Perl, SQL, PHP, & Python. I have examined Smalltalk extensively
> but have not actually written anything of consequence using it.
>
> The main reasons I have chosen Ruby are because:-
>...
> The Ruby source is free-format. Those flipping non-intuitive tabs
> and extraneous colons needed just waste my precious time.
>...
Second!!
The first reason that I got interested in Ruby was the license that 
it was forced to use (refering to the laws of a state that had 
passed UCITA 2b).  This was a clear and present danger, because 
nobody knows WHAT that might be interpreted to mean, and who it 
might affect.  (Consider Mr. Dimitri Skylarov [sp?].)  But the 
principle reason it retained my interest after the license issue 
was fixed was the white-space oriented meaning dependancy in 
Python.  That has bit me several time, when switching from one 
editor to another.  And the only way to reconsititute the meaning, 
without a complete re-analysis of the code, is to refer to a 
listing printed with the previous version.... and since one big 
reason for switching editors is because of the poor printing 
capabilities of some of them ...

Plus I keep thinking that a chunk of program code should be either 
a list or a tuple.  (Not is, should be.)  Ruby lets that happen, 
though not with complete generality.  I feel that there should be 
an isomorphic mapping between closures and functions, and the small 
differences between them bother me.
-- 
 Charles Hixson
 
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