From: "ara.t.howard" <ara.t.howard@...>
Date: 2008-12-16T02:20:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Function def at end of scripts


On Dec 13, 2008, at 2:11 AM, David A. Black wrote:

> It can serve a purpose, but please have mercy on those of us who like
> our Ruby in order :-) It's really not that hard to get used to the
> principle that the code (including method definitions) is executed as
> it's encountered, and then you don't have to think about whether or
> not to flip it.

i like it in order too - logical order that is:

class Controller
   before_filter do
     require_user
   end

   def action
   end
end

class Model
   has_many :children do
     def extension
     end
   end
end


the reality is that logical order and organization is far more  
important, consider reading a rails app 'in order' ;-)  or having to  
install your own 'run' hook at the end of every test suite.  the  
reality is that it's situational - if a script has 50 methods before  
it gets around to the 'main' call any sane person might enjoy reading  
the 'help' method first.  this is an overriding principle of my  
'main.rb' lib and i think most people would agree that reading  
something like

http://codeforpeople.com/lib/ruby/tumblr/tumblr-0.0.1/bin/tumblr

is preferable than needing to dig through the source until the help  
method happens to come along.  same goes for associations in models  
and filters in controllers, etc.  also consider that a block in ruby  
may or may not be executed in the same order that you read it

task do
   good thing this doesn't run here
end

or the fact that helper methods aren't injected into a view in rails  
until very late in the execution phase and are silo'd off precisely so  
that we do NOT have to read them en route to understanding  a view.

the order of code is always situational but i think that people who  
read alot of code from many languages, not only ruby, will agree that  
logical order is the one thing that should always be considered,  
language limitations/conventions are always a secondary consideration  
unless one programs exclusively in one language.  i think this is  
actually quite important since the evolution of ruby will introduce  
compliers and other enhancements that will/are undoubtedly change the  
way code is evaluated while logical constructs will remain stable.

so my thinking is that rubyists should *always* strive to present code  
in a rough logical order so long as great deviations from the idioms  
of the language are not made.  this included organizing projects into  
a good hierarchy, factoring out libs, using deferred execution  
(lambda), and tools such as BEGIN|END|at_exit etc.  by using all the  
tools provided to support the cleanest logical presentation code  
reading will be enhanced for even those without vast rubyfu.

my 2 cts.

a @ http://codeforpeople.com/
--
we can deny everything, except that we have the possibility of being  
better. simply reflect on that.
h.h. the 14th dalai lama