Re: YourLanguageSucks

if only people with this much energy for complaining could channel it into
fixing the problems, or even creating their own perfect language...


On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 8:39 PM, Kiswono Prayogo <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi, i found this link..  https://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks
> on part "Ruby sucks because:"
> i guess nearly half of them are just made up /irrelevant /deprecated..
>
> String#downcase? Who calls it "downcase?" It's called "lower case,"
> and the method should be called "lowercase" or "lower". And
> String#upcase should have been called "uppercase" or "upper".
> >> i agree, i found this annoying when i learn Ruby for the first time
>
> Unicode support should have been built in from 1.0, not added after
> much complaining in 1.9/2.0 in 2007
> >> deprecated
>
> No support for negative / positive look-behind in regular expressions in
> 1.8
> >> deprecated
>
> Regular expressions are always in multi-line mode
> >> ?
>
> No real support for arbitrary keyword arguments (key=value pairs in
> function definitions are positional arguments with default values)
> >> ?
>
> The documentation is not versioned.
> >> is it?
>
> Using @ and @@ to access instance and class members can be unclear at a
> glance.
> >> no!
>
> There are no smart and carefully planned changes that can't break
> compatibility; even minor releases can break compatibility: See
> "Compatibility issues" and "fileutils". This leads to multiple
> recommended stable versions: both 1.8.7 and 1.9.1 for Windows. Which
> one to use?
> >>  deprecated
>
> Experimental and (known to be) buggy features are added to the
> production and "stable" releases: See "passing a block to a Proc".
> >> ?
>
> The documentation is unchecked: it has dead links, like Things Any
> Newcomer Should Know
> >> ?
>
> The documentation is not up to date: Ruby C API Reference refers to
> version 1.8.4, but the latest stable release is 1.8.7.
> >>  deprecated?
>
> There's some minor gotchas. nil.to_i turns nil into 0, but 0 does not
> evaluate as nil. nil.to_i.nil? #=> false
> >> i disagree, this is fine
>
> String#to_i just ignores trailing characters, meaning: "x".to_i == 0
> >> i disagree, this is fine
>
> Ruby allows users to modify the built in classes, which can be useful,
> but limited namespace means addons can conflict. Experienced
> programmers know to add functionality through modules rather than
> monkey patching the built in classes, but is still prone to abuse.
> This has been promised to be resolved in ruby 2.0
> >> deprecated
>
> Aliased methods in the standard library make reading code written by
> others more confusing. E.g. Array#size/Array#length,
> Array#[]/Array#slice
> >> i disagree, this one is fine
>
> Mutable strings in a dynamic language! This means e.g. when a string
> is passed to a setter it should copy the string so the object can be
> sure that it won't change unexpectedly.
> >> ?
>
> Mutable types like arrays are still hashable. This can cause a hash to
> contain the same key twice, and return a random value (the first?)
> when accessing the key.
> >> ?
>
> Omitting parenthesis in function calls enable you to
> implement/simulate property setter, but can lead to ambiguities.
> >> ?
>
> Minor ambiguities between the hash syntax and blocks (closures), when
> using curly braces for both.
> >> ?
>
> Suffix-conditions after whole blocks of code, e.g. begin ... rescue
> ... end if expr You are guaranteed to miss the if expr if there are a
> lot of lines in the code block.
> >> ?
>
> The unless keyword (=if not) tends to make the code harder to
> comprehend instead of easier.
> >> no, i guess not
>
> Difference between unqualified method calls and access of local
> variables is not obvious. This is especially bad in a language that
> does not require you to declare local variables and where you can
> access them without error before you first assign them.
> >> ?
>
> "Value-leaking" functions. The value of the last expression in an
> function is implicitly the return value. You need to explicitly write
> nil if you want to make your function "void" (a procedure).
> >> just adding nil would be find right?
>
> pre-1.9: No way to get stdout, stderr and the exit code (all of them
> at once) of a sub process.
> >> deprecated?
>
> `` syntax with string interpolation for running sub processes. This
> makes shell injection attacks easy.
> >> ?
>
> Regular expressions magically assign variables: $1, $2, ...
> >> ?
>
> Standard containers (Array, Hash) have a very big interfaces that make
> them hard to emulate.
> >> emulate for what reason?
>
> Symbols and strings are both allowed and often used as keys in hashes,
> but "foo" != :foo, which led to inventions like
> HashWithIndifferentAccess.
> >> i believe this is fine
>
> Parser errors could be more clear. "syntax error, unexpected kEND,
> expecting $end" actually means "syntax error, unexpected keyword
> 'end', expecting end of input"
> >> ?
>
> --
> Regards,
> Kiswono P
> GB
>
>