From: Charles Oliver Nutter <headius@...>
Date: 2011-01-31T06:50:43+09:00
Subject: Re: why is overloading invalid in ruby.

2011/1/29 Jörg W Mittag <JoergWMittag+Ruby@googlemail.com>:
>> Anyway, I wonder if there has been any talk between MacRuby and the
>> other Ruby implementations on getting this sort of keyed arguments
>> standardized.
>
> AFAIK, Laurent Sansonetti did consult with matz to make sure that
> MacRuby's extensions would be forward compatible.

I don't believe that's the case, and if I remember right Matz actually
expressed concern that MacRuby was adding syntax that might later
conflict with MRI.

> So, while there does not exist a design, let alone an implementation
> of named arguments for Ruby 2.0, it seems to be clear that whatever
> design they come up with, will have to be compatible with MacRuby.

MacRuby has taken the risk of future syntax being incompatible. I
don't think their decision to add syntax no other Ruby impl supports
should limit future design of Ruby proper.

FWIW, I understand the justification for the MacRuby syntax (objc
interop), but it's pretty clear to me that adding incompatible syntax
puts MacRuby on its own wrt future standard syntax changes.

I've considered adding syntax to JRuby for some things (like to allow
static dispatch against Java objects, for perf) but in every case I've
only considered options that would be forward-compatible (like
comment-based annotation of types, etc).

- Charlie