From: Leslie Viljoen <leslieviljoen@...>
Date: 2006-10-03T21:19:34+09:00
Subject: Re: "Succinctness is Power", by Paul Graham

On 10/2/06, Zed A. Shaw <zedshaw@zedshaw.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Oct 2006 04:32:49 +0900
> "Wilson Bilkovich" <wilsonb@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 10/1/06, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:
> > > Martin Coxall wrote:
> > > > In any case, there's a question about about to what extent you *should*
> > > > host DSLs internally. It's my feeling that if you want to inline a DSL
> > > > in your code, make sure that language is still syntactically
> > > > recognizably a Ruby. Ruby on Rails is a classic example.
> > >
> > > The problem I have with the two best-known Ruby DSLs, Rails and Rake, is
> > > the somewhat non-intuitive mix of words that don't begin with colons,
> > > and symbols, which do. And Rails requires YAML in some places that are
> > > jarring to the reader. Why is the database connection description file
> > > in YAML and not in "a Ruby"?
> > >
> >
> > DHH mentioned at Canada on Rails (if I recall) that having
> > database.yml instead of database.rb was basically a beginner's
> > mistake, and that distant-future plans include turning that into a
> > Ruby script.
> > So, at least the rails core team agrees with you. Heh.
> >
>
> Oh great, an ever modifiable ruby DSL that we'll never be able to write a nice configuration > tool against.  What happened to embrace the constraint?

Perhaps you could get the best of both worlds by "constraining" the
developers to writing a simple API with every new config file
"format", so that code could read and write it.

Or otherwise you could have:

include database.rb
include custom-that-modifies-some-settings.rb

...which can override whatever database.rb does.

But I agree that YAML is better for this.

Les