From: hemant <gethemant@...>
Date: 2007-12-19T19:18:17+09:00
Subject: [Rhetoric] Two feature requests for safer Ruby Programming

You can take my take on following issues with a pinch of salt, when
you disagree I perhaps know, why you disagree and generally respect
your opinion no matter how badly i disagree.

1. Image a new guy joins your rails team and he writes code like this
in a controller:

   def get_quote(ticker)
      # create a request string, that matches internal protocol
      request = format_request_str(:quote, ticker)
      # Market is a class that hold TCP connections to server that can
give stock market quotes
      response = Market.get_response(request)
    end

    Above code is going to blow. Why? because request is a method
defined by ActionPack.
    What can we do to prevent this? or this guy is simply dumb and
should stop programming?

    Well in my opinion, the precious little that Ruby can do is to
enforce having '()'  for method invocation.

    Does that solve the problem? Heck no, what if our man goes and defines:

     def request(request_type,ticker)
        # create a request string and return it
     end

    There he is till shooting himself in foot. This brings second issue.

2. Adding methods to core classes, overriding core class methods,
silent override of methods inherited from parent classes
    is a big problem with Ruby. Ruby absolutely gives no indication
that this has happened. Today, you may claim that
   heck, I will stay away from such libraries ( quoting : raggi on
#ruby-lang ). Today you have that luxury, because even if a
   library is not documented, you can see the source code of every
damn library and find out, what its doing.

  You can stay safe that way. But this will not be the case in future.
JRuby, Ruby2.0, Rubinius,IronRuby are preparing a future where
  compiled bytecode may be only thing that can be distributed. Again,
as a free software guy You can avoid such "evil" libraries.
  But imagine, if you are using such a library and library is not very
well documented, you are in for a fun.

   Another thing that I have seen with rubyists (including myself) is,
they don't really follow class encapsulation properly. What I mean,
you will rarely
  see a library that uses :private and :protected properly. Why is
this? Because ease with which private methods can be called, people
don't really care.

  It is dangerous, without source code, proper encapsulation and
silent override of a method, you are in for fun. But this
encapsulation issue is
  just scratching the surface, even unindented override of public
methods is a potential hazard.

  Whats the solution?

  In my opinion, when unintended override of a method happens, Ruby
should throw a warning. To silent that warning, one should explicitly
say you are
  overriding a method.


Thats about it.


-- 
Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting
conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own summer with my
own coals.

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