From: Tasos Laskos <zapotek@...>
Date: 2010-06-23T03:03:54+09:00
Subject: Re: Help with Ruby return types and documentation

Richard Conroy wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 4:59 PM, Tasos Laskos <zapotek@segfault.gr> 
> wrote:
>>
>> And of course I did all those things, I'm not an imbecile and I'm also
>> not bashing Ruby.
>>
>> I'd really like not to use IRB just to figure out an inheritance
>> hierarchy or the available method/attributes of an object.
>>
>>
> Hi Tasos,
>      I came from Java like yourself, so the absence of return type
> documentation really
> warped my head too, to start with. You really can't expect Ruby authors 
> to
> document
> return types like they do in Java - a Ruby method can return anything 
> from a
> method.
> In practice API writers are unlikely to be jerks about it - returned 
> objects
> tend to have
> a lot of consistency.
> 
> While you may not like the IRB option, in practice it is your fastest 
> path
> to understanding.
> However you should really take a look at awesome_print:
> 
> http://www.rubyinside.com/awesome_print-a-new-pretty-printer-for-your-ruby-objects-3208.html
> 
> Its a Ruby gem that puts pp (pretty print) on steroids, giving you a lot 
> of
> information about
> the objects, including its inheritance hierarchy, and the tree structure 
> of
> any Collections.
> 
> There isn't really a shortcut to learning Ruby libraries. Most don't 
> play
> mindgames with
> the return types. However HTML inspection APIs like nokogiri will be
> returning objects
> that represent complex HTML structures. I remember Hpricot being much 
> the
> same.
> 
> Its worth taking the library through IRB (and ap) for 30 minutes or so 
> with
> some test data,
> to get a feel for it.
> 
> regards,
> Richard.

Hi Richard,

Thanks a lot for your informative reply.

You missed the one about coming from Java --not a big fun-- but I do 
appreciate its documentation.

My background is in C and PHP.
PHP is dynamically typed too but the documentation is pretty clear about 
types and examples.

First day of Ruby today so I guess a working spider and half working 
analyzer isn't too bad of a progress.

I just have to get used to doing things the Ruby way, which I will 
eventually...unfortunately patience is not one of my qualities.

What might have sounded like hostility is actually eagerness. :)

Funny you should mention pretty_print and the like, I was just reading 
about it.
That should be a great help for me.

Time to setup awesome_print and get cracking with IRB.

Thanks again. :)
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