From: Massimiliano Mirra <list@...>
Date: 2002-09-12T06:25:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby aesthetics

On Tue, Sep 10, 2002 at 10:13:50PM +0900, William Djaja Tjokroaminata wrote:
> If we say yes, then in Ruby we will use both "if" and "unless", but then
> because "unless" is so useful, when we code in C, we are supposed to
> define the "unless macro" and make good use of both "if" and
> "unless".

So using something nice we can find in each and every Ruby
installation in the world and that every Ruby programmer can read,
means that to stay consistent we should modify our own single C
installation to have something that we alone are used to read?

> This example is just a starting point, to show how we have been
> inconsistent in deciding whether it is advantageous to have a minimalist
> (in terms of keywords/verbosity) language.

This example can easily mean that anything a language has that C
hasn't, isn't useful just because nobody would bother to bend a well
known and accepted language.

If minimalist approach is good, why don't we modify C compilers to get
rid of all those extra tokens?

> It appears that our opinion regarding whether we like "unless" or
> not has been arbitrarily set by the language itself, whether it is
> built-in-ly defined or not.

We can say that `unless' helps to better express intent because we
have tried it, and we've been able to try it because someone did put
it in the language.  I don't know if that classifies as `has been
abitrarily set by the language itself', to me it just looks like a
necessary sequence of events.


Massimiliano