From: William Djaja Tjokroaminata <billtj@...>
Date: 2002-09-06T05:08:55+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby aesthetics

I think you have a very good point regarding Ruby design.  Although I
don't think (at least for now) that Ruby is going to be used in very large
scale, it may limit the scalability of Ruby.  I don't think people can be
expected to always check obj.instance_variables every time they create a
new data member.

In my case, as I develop in C, I have put a lot of data members in C
struct instead of Ruby data hash, in which case name collision is
impossible.  I still have not solved the puzzle of how to best create the
C's struct so that we can mimic the Ruby object inheritance on the C
side.  Probably the solution is to combine Ruby and C++ for large projects
where C++ takes much of the load and Ruby is used more as an advance,
programmable, interface?

Regards,

Bill
==========================================================================
Christian Szegedy <szegedy@t-online.de> wrote:
> In C++, you don't have to know the implementation of the base class, 
> i.e., you only need to know the interface. If you declare a new
> data member, then it will hide the original one, so you don't have to
> worry about the private part of all ancestor classes, if you define
> a new data member.

> In Ruby, the situation is even worse, as all methods may introduce new
> data memebers, so you have to check the body of all methods, if you
> want to avoid name collisions for sure.
> It may be OK for small projects, but if you have to work in a large
> class hierarchy written by someone else, it can become hopeless,
> and you can only hope that nothing goes wrong.

> Besides, I think it is a clear violation of the separation of 
> mplementation and interface.

> Best Regards, Christian