From: Sean O'Halpin <sean.ohalpin@...>
Date: 2009-02-01T17:37:57+09:00
Subject: Re: Its a Free Language

On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 11:00 PM, Mike Stephens <rubfor@recitel.net> wrote:
> An attractive aspect of Ruby is how it is usually presented as agnostic
> - you can use it in an object oriented style or you can choose
> functional or procedural styles. So if you like to think in terms of
> procedures instead of objects you can still sit at the same tables as
> other Ruby programmers. Having said that, I would guess that any
> procedure can be re-represented in terms of objects and your thinking
> should move in that direction over time to align with the essence of the
> language.
>

The power of Ruby does not come from its object-orientation alone -
how many times do we really use polymorphism or inheritance? Yet I bet
most of us use #select, #map, blocks and literal regular expressions
in almost every program we write. I certainly do.

I personally see Ruby as an elegant melding of Lisp, Smalltalk and
Perl - functional, object-oriented and pragmatic, evenly balanced and
working in harmony.

I recommend every programmer should read
http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/patterns/ppoop.html as an (unintentional)
precautionary tale against the over-zealous application of
object-oriented design,

Regards,
Sean