From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2002-09-04T15:56:47+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby aesthetics

>
> Thoughts?  Not that I want sig. indent for Ruby.  No need to
> mess with a good thing.  But if someone were designing a new
> language and he/she didn't want it to be as annoying as Python,
> what do you think?
>
> Tim Hammerquist

If I were designing a language, I would consider enforcing indentation -
but only for clarity, not syntax.  Blocks would still end with "end".

I would outlaw tabs as well.  I don't even know how Python relates to
tabs; there seems to be a bit of discussion about it.

I don't expect my design decisions would be popular, but then again I
don't expect I'd be designing a language either! ;)

My frame-of-reference for good language design is Ruby.  So compared to
Ruby, I would add:
 - list comprehensions
 - calling procs would look like real functions, not arrays!
     e.g. id = proc { |x| x };  id(12)   # not id[12]
 - first-class functions (someone please correct me here)
 - def within def

The first one is already discussed elsewhere in this thread, and I don't
want to sound like a zealot just by mentioning it here.  The others
probably have issues; I've not thought it through.

Cheers,
Gavin