From: Thomas Adam <thomas.adam22@...>
Date: 2007-10-18T19:58:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Naming Conventions

On 18/10/2007, arcadiorubiogarcia@gmail.com
<arcadiorubiogarcia@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm quite new to Ruby. One of the things I try to get when I learn a
> new language are naming conventions. I hate to write, for instance,
> Java code that looks like C++.

Heh.  Not all of that is just down to naming conventions, of course.
What I sometimes do when I am switching to a new language is base a
sample program I might write in #{some_other_language} and then look
at making it more like that language.  That said, I know a lot of
people who write perl code that looks like C.  :P

> My question is: are Ruby's aliases intended for helping beginners
> coming from other languages, or you are truly free to choose any of
> the provided alternatives. For example:

It's not about helping the beginner, it's generally about your own
style which you might choose.

> is Enumerable#collect preferred over Enumerable#map
> or is Array#length preferred over Array#size ?

Either.  They can be used interchangeably.  I happen to prefer
Enumerable#collect, although you might (if you know perl, for
instance) prefer Enumerable#map.

The choice is yours.  :)

Where the style counts more though is in terms of casing.  So for instance:

* Constants start with a capital letter.
* Method names are in snake_case.
* Class names in CamelCase.

Etc, etc.  Those sorts of idioms are probably the area you should
concentrate on.

-- Thomas Adam