From: William Djaja Tjokroaminata <billtj@...>
Date: 2002-09-07T05:00:18+09:00
Subject: Re: Larry Wall's comments on Ruby

He, he, I think Larry Wall really got himself into trouble this time.  The
first time I learned Ruby, I didn't use OO feature at all; I just did
"straight" procedural programming in a script:

    a = ...
    b = ...
    c = a * b
    def func (x)
    ....

Then finally, after I learned all the OO stuff, I got the quite pleasant
surprise, that I actually already programmed in OO since the beginning as
the simple script above is actually inside the class Object.  What can be
better than this?  Even in Java people have to be choked with endless
keywords and object stuff since the beginning.  I would not hesitate to
say that Matz is much more genius than Larry!

Regarding the keyword "my", my philosophy is always less typing is better
(unless we are paid by the hour :) ).  To me, the use of "@" for
instance var and nothing for local var is one of the best, if not *the
best* way in designing a language.  As I already wrote before, there is no
comparison between Perl and Ruby, well, ... except probably for CPAN...

Regards,

Bill
===========================================================================
Phil Tomson <ptkwt@shell1.aracnet.com> wrote:
> Larry Wall:

> For instance, I think it's a violation of the Beginner's Principle of 
> Least Surprise to make everything an object. To a beginner, a number is 
> just a number. A string is a string. They may well be objects as far as 
> the computer is concerned, and it's even fine for experts to treat them as 
> objects. But premature OO is a speed bump in the novice's onramp. "