From: James Britt <james.britt@...>
Date: 2009-07-15T06:35:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Twelve rules of Ruby

Mike Stephens wrote:
> The original example was about how to approach keeping your house cool, 
> not a manual on the innards of air conditioning. It said, for example, 
> don't bother about the walls because the roof is more important.
> 
> On that basis my first rule would be:
> 
> 1) Don't worry about any Ruby feature that you don't need to use. It's 
> very, very powerful but unless you need to write something like Rails or 
> you are an astrophysics PhD, then ignore all the fancy stuff.


It's the Blub thing.

What's "fancy" depends on one's exposure.  You often can't know you need 
something unless you've already spent some time understanding it.

People who come to Ruby from, say, VB, will likely find the notion of 
list mapping or injection pretty alien.  And they may never see where 
they need to use it, because they've never had to deal with code that 
included those concepts.

To become proficient at a language you need to force yourself out of 
your comfort zone and get acquainted with different ways of solving 
problems.


-- 
James Britt

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