From: Just Another Victim of the Ambient Morality <ihatespam@...>
Date: 2007-12-11T11:40:03+09:00
Subject: Re: How much would variable declarations in Ruby make you wince?


"Eivind Eklund" <eeklund@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:dc9b20bb0712101505n32086fdcgb11d508192064d03@mail.gmail.com...
> On Dec 10, 2007 8:50 PM, Just Another Victim of the Ambient Morality
> <ihatespam@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> > With Ruby, this is just an initialization - "variable = nil".  With
>> > Perl it's "my variable" - alas, that variable is the shadowed by the
>> > other my declaration I wrote later in the code and earlier in time.
>> >
>> > I had this bug just last week.
>> >
>> > In my opinion, the noise of repeated "var <stuff>"-declarations (or
>> > "my <stuff>" declarations) makes the code less readable, with the
>> > corresponding increase in correctness checking being a benefit of less
>> > worth than the cost.  This is the same as my view of (other) type
>> > declarations in most cases: Their cost in terms of being in the way of
>> > code readability/transformability exceeds their benefits.
>>
>>     As I've mentioned, above, there should be no cost except that of
>> actually having to type it out.
>
> I think maybe we would communicate better if you read what you were 
> replying to?
>
> One strength of Ruby - an important one - is that it is succinct.
> There is very little extra noise compared to what is strictly
> necessary to say what the program is doing.  Your proposal introduce
> extra noise.  This noise has a cost for readability in some cases.  My
> opinion is that this cost is higher than the utility of the construct,
> as the construct guard against an error that is easy to guard against
> in other ways,  other ways that are generally better, like unit
> testing or string completion.

    I disagree that "succinctness" is an important part of Ruby's strength. 
At least, not in the same manner that I think you mean it.  Ruby lacks much 
of C/C++ redundant "scaffolding code" (a term I've made up) and that lends 
it power.  However, I don't think variable declarations are redundant. 
There are times when you deliberately mean to create a variable and there 
are times when you don't.  This is a real distinction and it takes real 
information to distinguish it, although not much in my opinion.
    Besides, if you were really serious about reducing "line noise," you'd 
be advocating Python-esque whitespace block definitions.  Seriously, what's 
with all these "end" keywords sprinkled all over the place?  That's just 
extra noise.  Surely you want to remove that noise, right?  Right?


>>  My guess is that declarations are far less common than variable use,
>
> This depends on code style.  Those that use a lot of short methods
> also have more variable declarations compared to variable assignments,
> in my experience.

    ...those that use a lot of short methods and make use of short lived 
variables rather than a more functional structure, yes, have more variable 
declarations.  Still, I don't think it's so bad...