From: ThoML <micathom@...>
Date: 2008-04-26T01:15:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Minimalism

> I have been reading a WikiPedia piece on Minimalist Computing (http://
> tinyurl.com/6h83b3). Could we argue that Ruby is a minimal language?

No. Eg the grammar doesn't look very minimal:
http://blog.nicksieger.com/articles/2006/10/27/visualization-of-rubys-grammar
http://lwn.net/Articles/206533/

I have to say I find the article quite funny. Apart from the lack of a
clear definition of "minimal" including some kind of threshold (the
example of minimalism get bigger with every paragraph), I think it's
definitely, uhm, interesting to see a picture of a "minimal" window
manager that shows a not so minimal web browser with an army of
useless plugins installed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Windowlab-screenshot.png

This kind of minimalism is a placebo. (Nothing against placebos. Don't
get me wrong.)

Also note the mention of brainfuck as a minimal language.