From: Johann Hibschman <johann@...>
Date: 2001-10-26T03:54:40+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:23334] Re: Bruce Eckel's opinion of Ruby

>>>>> "Emiliano" == Emiliano  <emile@iris-advies.com> writes:

    Emiliano> So it's all a matter of what restriction clashes least
    Emiliano> with a personal idea of what's 'right' in a language. I
    Emiliano> can accept that for a large group of people, that means
    Emiliano> Python.

I must admit to being surprised when several people complained about
Python being more obnoxiously strict than Ruby.  I find myself running
into the Ruby restrictions far more often than I ever noticed the
Python ones.

I mean, Ruby imposes case conventions on names.  Furthermore, it has a
parser that just leaves me feeling worried, since whitespace between
tokens is important.  Having syntactically important whitespace at the
beginning of lines is clear; it's all in one place, simple.  Having it
within lines seems just as bad, if not worse.

Python doesn't require any particular spacing, just that bodies of the
same conceptual level are indented equally, which seems like a trivial
restriction.  And for that, you don't have to waste a quarter of the
lines in your program on "end".  It seems like a good deal to me.

Ruby's strengths are its purer OO and convenient blocks.  The syntax
is spooky magic.  Now Ruby with Python indentation, that would be a
language...  Heresy, I know.  :-)

--Johann