From: Juan Zanos <juan_zanos@...>
Date: 2009-02-17T23:44:26+09:00
Subject: Re: What are your favorite Ruby features?


On 17 févr. 09, at 01:16, David Masover wrote:
> I like Ruby's relaxed syntax. I like letting things like  
> parentheses be implied, leading to interesting, emergent phenomena  
> like hashes as named arguments. (Not that I would complain if the  
> language implemented named arguments -- even better if I don't have  
> to use them as a hash -- so long as I can if I need to.)
>
> I like the ability to create good-looking DSLs, but that's similar  
> to the above.

It's possible that without the humble feature of optional parentheses  
Rake would never have been invented and I might never have been  
compelled to take a serious look at Ruby.  Since then I've often  
wondered why parentheses are still so heavily used in most Ruby code  
even when they  offer no compelling utility for most uses.  In  
contrast, omitting unnecessary semicolons seems almost universal.  I  
suppose parentheses are more habit forming for some reason.