From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@...>
Date: 2008-02-29T02:34:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Monkeypatching is Destroying Ruby

On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 6:16 AM, Florian Gilcher <flo@andersground.net> wrote:
>
>  But, because we are lazy, lazy ruby programmers, we love our
>  object.send syntax. So we implement a shorthand method. Another
>  example is Object.in?(), often seen as a shorthand for
>  some_collection.contains?(obj) (Im not sure, but this is called
>  'grief', afaik). The first is nicer, the second is cleaner. Many vote
>  for the first - another Method in Object. Another well known Library
>  defines Object#should because they think of it to be nicer. By doing
>  this, we are slowly overloading the core-system.

And? There's nothing wrong with "overloading the core system" if the
end result is cleaner and more readable code. Personally, good ruby
code is all about expressiveness and readability, not proper OO
encapsulation and staying-out-of-the-core. The only real problem, as
you note, is that of conflicting extensions to the same core classes,
and care does need to be taken with that, but that's no reason to
throw the baby out with the bathwater.

One interesting thing to do is something I've seen in the Javascript
world - libraries that come with an option to install themselves in
core classes or stick to a namespace, so that you can either type
MyLib.do_something(object), or turn the option on and then do
object.do_something.

martin