From: Todd Benson <caduceass@...>
Date: 2008-03-29T20:51:07+09:00
Subject: Re: What is Ruby's biggest strength ?

On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 1:40 AM, Christopher Dicely <cmdicely@gmail.com> wrote:
>  Ruby can be hard to decipher coming from many other popular languages,
>  as many use
>  very similar (to each other) C-like syntax, and Ruby is both different
>  in important ways and
>  freer (optional parens, for instance) than most C-like languages. This
>  isn't an issue of hygiene
>  ("clean" code) so much as it is one of familiar syntax. TMTOWTDI also
>  means that different
>  programmer's will express things in the ways most natural to them,
>  which may not be the
>  most natural to other readers.

One thing that was hard for me to grasp at first, but now love, is
that Ruby sort of gives you a sense of thinking of an object as a
living thing with it's own personality, including syntax, or "birth"
of the object, if you will.  It makes it easy to do the "my object can
interact with yours as long as we can handshake" OO.

Now, for maintenance, I've found that unless the code is intentionally
obfuscated, it's not that hard to go over it regardless of style.  Of
course, it's nice to have conventions to keep everyone working on a
project mildly in check.

Todd