From: Ashley Moran <work@...>
Date: 2006-12-06T07:41:42+09:00
Subject: Re: "more than enough rope"


On Dec 05, 2006, at 10:21 pm, Giles Bowkett wrote:

> I just found out that Josh Susser's cancelled presentation at RubyConf
> was going to be called "More than enough rope to hang yourself," and
> was going to be about how to avoid misusing Ruby's power. I've
> definitely written code where my main goal was getting my head around
> lambda() or things like that -- now I have code on my hands where I'm
> trying to decide, is this beautiful, well-written stuff, or was I just
> indulging in a bunch of gratuitous cleverness because I had the
> option?
>
> Obviously this is a judgement call -- but does anyone know good
> resources for those questions like, when do I use metaprogramming,
> when do I just use more normal techniques?


I've wondered this too after I've written something that looks a bit  
too clever for its own good.

I usually ask myself these questions:

- do I only think it looks too clever because I couldn't do it in Java?
- when I come back to it 6 months later, will it be more obvious what I
   was doing than the longhand version?
- could I factor out the cleverness into a library, or is it more of
   a design pattern?

answers.should == %w[Yes] * 3  # :)

If the test passes, it's probably good.  Usually, when something  
looks like Ruby for Ruby's sake, it's because before I wrote it, I  
wasn't good enough to understand it (never figured out how that  
works...).  If I feel like a better programmer afterwards, it stays.

Ashley