From: Hal Fulton <hal9000@...>
Date: 2007-07-19T07:42:30+09:00
Subject: Re: The Pebble in the Ruby Shoe

Raphael Gillett wrote:
> 
> Ruby aims to be a human friendly programming language that embodies the
> principle of least surprise.  However, there is an important feature of
> the language that, despite being a glaring exception to this laudable
> goal, seems to have crept unquestioned into the Ruby core.  It is a
> rebarbative and truly medieval practice which everyone knows causes
> endless confusion, countless unnecessary errors, and a great deal of
> wasted programming time in all languages that incorporate it, e.g., C,
> Java.  In violation of Ruby's ethos, this feature is present purely to
> suit the compiler/interpreter at the expense of the person.
> 
> The pebble in the Ruby shoe is the counter-intuitive use of indexing of
> elements of arrays, strings, etc., from 0 to n-1 instead of the more
> natural 1 to n.   Like prisoners who have got used to their chains, the
> Ruby community seems to have meekly accepted this impediment to clear
> thinking.   It is particularly puzzling that Ruby should hobble its
> users in this way, because it is manifestly unnecessary (e.g., Fortran
> and Pascal don't do it).
> 

I sympathize, but if you were more experienced, I believe you would
understand it. Ruby does it the "right way."

No flames intended, but I am certain you are not from a computer science
background?


Hal