From: paul@...
Date: 2002-09-07T05:34:53+09:00
Subject: Re: Larry Wall's comments on Ruby

On Sat, 7 Sep 2002, Denys Usynin wrote:

> yeah and as I said, depending on your background , Ruby is just as full
> of surprises as C++ is.

The question is, once you've mastered Ruby's basic worldview do you still
keep being surprised. Some languages are never surprising once you've
mastered their basics. Others continually surprise with their baroque
twists and turns and special cases. POLS suggests that the designer is
consciously focusing on a design where new concepts fall naturally out of
old ones. C++, by contrast, optimizes for performance. Perl optimizes for
"expressiveness" and in succinctness.

> I am probably the only person in the world  who never used perl/python
> :)  When I first needed a scripting language I just learned Ruby
> instead. I love the language but I can by no means say it was natural
> and not surprising to me. Quite the opposite, I had to adapt
> to the way Ruby's logic works and get the feel for it.

Of course. But do you have to KEEP adapting to quirky behaviours that
don't fit properly into the logical model you've adapted to? In C++, most
of us do. "X implies Y except when Z which occurs if and only if Q." Like:
"use the delete operator. Except for deleting arrays. There is a special
operator for that. And don't use delete on objects that were malloc'd."

For more examples:

http://new-brunswick.net/workshop/c++/faq/strange-inheritance.html

 Paul Prescod