From: Kevin Smith <kevinbsmith@...>
Date: 2001-09-21T14:21:09+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:21479] Re: Ruby/objects book in style of The Little Lisper

--- Christopher Sawtell <csawtell@paradise.net.nz> wrote:
> > The question is: can I pull it off? To see, I wrote the
> first chapter, 
> > which you can find here:
> >
> <http://www.visibleworkings.com/little-ruby/Chapter1.pdf>

I think it's promising. I do think you could pull it off,
but it's definitely not "there" yet, for me. I haven't read
the original, so I have no idea how this compares in style.

A few comments, which you can take or leave as you wish:

1. Pet peeve #1: factorial should not be implemented using
recursion. It's just a loop. Simpler. Faster. Safer.

# warning: untested code ahead!
def factorial(n)
  result = 1
  n.downto(2) do | value |
    result *= value
  end
  return result
end

2. Pet peeve #2: programming books that focus on math. I
don't mind having factorial in there somewhere, but putting
numbers first will turn off a lot of non-math folks, I
think.

3. The first function in your book is pretty complex. I
would tend towards something simpler. In the numbers realm,
a method that returns n*n, or n*2. In the words realm, a
method that always returns "Bob" or something, perhaps?

4. The persona on the right seems more knowlegable than I
would expect. Describing the factorial function in English
would be reasonable, for a math-person, I suppose. But a
non-math person won't be able to relate.

I was surprised that the right side introduced most of the
terms, like "while loop", "message", "argument", and
"self". I guess it's part of the style.

5. Naming a method factorial2 is confusing. I thought it
might be factorial 2 aka factorial(2) at first.

6. To answer your question about "object variables", I do
in fact call them "object members" sometimes. Perhaps you
could postpone "instance", or just punt and say they're
called instance variables "just because".

7. The pace so far seems somewhat uneven. Sometimes we jump
ahead further than I'm comfortable with, or make passing
references to things we haven't covered yet. I chalk all of
that up to it being an early draft.

If it's something you want to do, I say "go for it!" Be
sure to get plenty of feedback from typical members of your
sample audience so by the time you publish it's a gem.

Kevin

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