From: Josh Cheek <josh.cheek@...>
Date: 2011-09-06T09:54:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby a "4th generation language"? Credible sources?

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On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 2:13 PM, Mike Stephens <rubfor@recitel.net> wrote:

> 4GLs were good. Apart from keeping me in beer for more than decade, they
> encouraged you to do simple things in preference to flashy things. Most
> things in business are open to simple solutions, and you write things
> faster and with less errors. Ruby is prone to over-sophistication, with
> certain clever people like David Heinemeier Hansson unable to resist the
> temptation.
>
>
Can you clarify this? I have a suspicion that what you are calling
"over-sophistication" is just one way of talking about the implicit "magic"
of convention over configuration. If you know the conventions, then is Rails
(What I assume you are referring to when you criticize DHH) actually overly
sophisticated? And if you don't know the conventions, then isn't the problem
ignorance rather than sophistication?

A follow up question. If you are referring to more than convention over
configuration, then is it actually overly sophisticated, or is it just a set
of techniques that weren't common and thus initially seemed sophisticated,
until people became more familiar with them? For example, design patterns
seem overly sophisticated when you are unfamiliar with them. But after you
learn them, they aren't so confusing, and they allow you to solve some
complex problems.

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