From: Mathieu Bouchard <matju@...>
Date: 2002-01-01T18:30:27+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:29940] Re: Ruby/Python: Software Engineering


On Tue, 1 Jan 2002, Quentin Crain wrote:
>That perspective doesn't exist, because there are many of them. AFAIK,
>methodologies like XP and PragProg (which are the most popular among Ruby
>users) carefully avoid dictating coding or cosmetics and instead
>concentrate on the whole authorship process.
> I am not sure how to reconcile with:
>    Code must be formatted to agreed coding standards.
>    [ http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/standards.html ]
>    We all code to the exact same standards.
>    [ http://www.xprogramming.com/Practices/PracCodingStandards.html ]
>    Develop and adopt formal style standards.
>    [ http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FormalStandards ]

Those three documents agree on one thing: it's a good thing to have an
official style and follow it. Note that none of those concentrate on
particular style elements; instead they concentrate on making
communication smoother (authorship process), for which coding style is one
of the means (and the details are not specified by the methodology).

> >You are relatively safe with either Ruby or Python. The biggest offenders
> >may be C (buffer overflows, too many typecasting) and shell-scripts
> >(quoting hell). Perl is safe compared to those, but still lacks exception
> >handling, which makes it overhead to write correct code.
> But what about methodologies? How does Ruby help (or hinder) me there?

Methodologies you think about probably encourage program correctness,
which is the example I used above. If I take another example... In Ruby,
the cost of writing objects/classes is the same as writing just
procedures, so the language encourages reuse. In a language where you have
to sprinkle OO code with "self", there's an incentive to use plain
procedures (and global resources) instead.

Do you want another such example? You see, I can't give you a complete
picture quickly, because I have not researched on the topic prior to this
discussion.

> > > A language is more than its syntax--it ought to fit into a
> > > methodology, encourage adherence,
> >A language is there to allow, not to restrict.
> Any and all languages do both.

Yes, because the goal is to allow, which has a side-effect of restricting
other things. But there shouldn't be a goal of restricting. There
shouldn't be language elements that are there only to restrict.

> And by being "pure"-OO does that not restrict

"pure OO" happens to be the idea of structured programming pushed to its
maximum. It happens to include former (lesser) incarnations of structured
programming.

> to a particular paradigm?

Of course, choosing a p*** restricts you to a p***... that's what the word
means. Consider yourself lucky not to have to write all your code as
dataflow diagrams. "pure OO" is a surprisingly gentle p***...

but you have used the p-word. prepare to be desintegrated. =)

________________________________________________________________
Mathieu Bouchard                   http://hostname.2y.net/~matju