From: Phrogz <gavin@...>
Date: 2007-01-09T15:35:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Why is there a seperate Math class?

Daniel Finnie wrote:
> Why does everything have to be Math.<func>(num)?  Isn't num.func more
> object oriented-ish?

In addition to the answers by others, what would you do for those math
functions whose arity isn't 1?

  Math.methods(false).select{ |n| Math.method(n).arity != 1 }
  #=> ["hypot", "atan2", "ldexp"]

All three take two arguments. While 3.hypot(4) *might* make
sense--given one leg of a right triangle, how long is the hypotenuse to
a given other leg--30.atan2( 40 ) makes little sense to me.

A few exceptions might not make a good arguments against 19 possibly
plausible cases. In my opinion, however, once you have to break the
rule it makes sense to look for a new way to handle all the cases
similarly.

And, personally, I agree with Matz - the trigonometric functions simply
look more correct (to me) as functions that take an argument, not
methods invoked upon a number. That's purely a matter of taste, though.