From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2002-08-21T09:33:42+09:00
Subject: Re: What makes a "good" Ruby extension?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lyle Johnson" <lyle@users.sourceforge.net>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2002 6:51 PM
Subject: Re: What makes a "good" Ruby extension?


> Tim Hunter wrote:
>
> > So I'm reading the "Comparing Gui Toolkits" wiki page
> > (http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?ComparingGuiToolkits) and I notice that
> > the author characterizes one of the Ruby interfaces as "Perl-like" and
> > another as "immature." As someone who's been busy beavering away at his
> > own Ruby interface to an existing C library for some months now, I'm
wondering,
> > just what makes a "good" Ruby interface? (After all, I don't want to
> > embarrass myself by offering a bad one to the Ruby community :-)
>
> I think this is a question that a lot of Ruby programmers struggle with,
> especially if they've come to Ruby after a long history with some other
> programming language. Despite efforts like this:
>
> http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RubyStyleGuide
>
> there's not really a "checklist" out there to compare your work to (and
> I don't think anyone wants that anyways).

Tim - what Lyle says is true. There's no one right way to do things.

And while I claim my list has some good ideas, it's not definitive
and it shouldn't be viewed as a checklist.

And as for being embarrassed over a "bad" interface... don't worry
about it! Nothing is perfect the first time. That's why we have
version numbers. Any contribution is welcome, and a bad interface
is better than no interface at all. Usually. :)

> Perhaps your best bet, then, is to study Ruby code that *others* have
> pointed to as exemplary of "The Ruby Way". That certainly includes
> looking at the sources from Ruby's standard library, but a lot of code
> from the Ruby community falls into this category as well. For example,
> many people have pointed to Sean Russell's REXML library:
>
> http://www.germane-software.com/software/rexml
>
> as a very intuitive (read: "Ruby-like") interface. I hope others reading
> this thread might throw in their $0.02 about other good examples (for my
> benefit ;)

Yes, from the little I've seen of REXML, I like it. Hard to compare, since
I don't use XML much.

Some other good coders (IMO): Dave Thomas, Guy Decoux, obviously Matz,
David Alan Black, Michael Neumann. There are others.

Study the Ruby core classes and methods (and net stuff) and the libraries.
The *API* I mean, not the code. Although the code is good too. :)

I guess NOW that is my $0.02 worth.

Hal