From: Emiliano Date: 2001-10-24T07:37:22+09:00 Subject: [ruby-talk:23112] Re: Bruce Eckel's opinion of Ruby Robert Feldt wrote: > I agree with all of this. But coding standard and layout issues can be > handled outside of the language itself. Normalize and check style > conformance at check-in. Not all source code management tools support this, and people will have to spend extra time fixing it when it happens. Like Python or not, these things are checked at compile time. That's not to say you can't enforce coding standards for other languages, but for Python it's been a clear decision to make it part of the language, and many people appearantly see a benefit to this. And you can't enforce a coding standard everywhere. Controlled corporate environments could maybe get away with it (although I'll leave you to convince our engineers to not tar-and-feather you for bringing up the concept), many an open source project would not be able to do so without losing contributers. People can get all hot and bothered when someone 'attacks' their coding style. At least you get to skip that discussion in Python projects. Not that I'd subject myself to Pythons' coding mandates any time soon :) > If one language had a more flexible syntax but allowed me to more clearly > express my intentions with the design and implementation one might > consider finding a way to restrict the syntax rather than dump the > language. I'm not saying that Ruby is more semantically powerful than > Python though (they're both Turing complete... ;-)). And there's the issue: what's more clear to you could well be utterly unreadable to another. > Some but not many. Only C and VB though. I feel your pain. > I agree that clearness is key here. But syntax can be checked and > transformed. I'd definately always vote down automated code transformations in any of my projects. The tools (like gnu indent, for example) don't always produce legible code layout, and it's a disaster waiting to happen. At some point the tool will mangle your code. Emile