From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2009-11-09T06:44:15+09:00
Subject: Re: Trip down memory lane...

On Mon, 9 Nov 2009, David Masover wrote:

> On Sunday 08 November 2009 08:32:53 am David A. Black wrote:
>> Hi --
>>
>> I've been hunting through old RCRs, and came across my favorite
>> rejected one:
>>
>> http://oldrcrs.rubypal.com/rejected.html#rcr120
>
> Actually, it looks like rcr124 was eventually accepted as BasicObject, right?

It's a little different: the reason for rejection was:

   See technique used in delegate.rb for such purpose.

as opposed to the reason for rejection of 120, which was:

   No, it should not.

:-) Also, though I can't remember the details, I seem to remember that
Matz actually suggested that someone submit such an RCR so that he
could comment definitively on the matter and spare everyone from
revisiting the question over and over again.

> I can see why rcr147 was rejected, but it's not entirely without precedent --
> see .profile for sh and bash.
>
> And rcr169, I actually like. What if the exception was raised deep in another
> method, but it's something you can handle? Also not without precedent, as Lisp
> has these.

True, but the business of precedents from other languages sort of
cancels itself out, since it encompasses literally tens or hundreds of
thousands of features, large and small. Of course lots of Ruby
features are adopted or adapted from other languages; but I don't
think the presence of a feature or practice in another language,
per se, militates in favor of its inclusion in Ruby.

> Not to re-open old discussions, I just thought it was interesting --
> especially #124, which was rejected, and is now implemented. Seems the
> rejection isn't final.

I think the BasicObject concept (unlike the putting-class-names-in-
method-signatures concept) was bubbling under the surface for a long
time, and appeared in various incarnations, including the delegate.rb
technique that Matz referred to as well as Jim Weirich's BlankSlate
class, before being adopted into the family tree. It wasn't a case of
something fundamentally out of character for the language. Not all RCR
rejection is created equal :-) (And part of that, too, is of course
that Matz can change his mind over time.)


David

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