From: Albert Wagner <alwagner@...>
Date: 2002-11-04T06:22:35+09:00
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Ruby

On Sunday 03 November 2002 2:34 pm, Austin Ziegler wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Nov 2002 05:14:59 +0900, Albert Wagner wrote:
> > On Sunday 03 November 2002 1:43 pm, Austin Ziegler wrote:
> > <snip>
> >
> >> ...too many symbols...
> >> ... it doesn't read naturally...
> >> ... It looks odd...
> >> ...harder to read...
> >> ...it doesn't seem as natural...
> >
> > <snip>
> I would appreciate it if you don't necessarily cut the context from
> my statements, because they're quite specific. 

I apologize if my notation offended.  I thought that "<snip>" and "..." before 
and after were adequate to indicate that the phrases were "out of context" 
and therefore anyone curious about the context would read your post.

> To pull something
> random from Seaside:
>
> !IAPage methodsFor: 'accessing' stamp: 'AB 2/17/2002 20:46'!

This is a snippet from a marshalled file of Smalltalk code, not actually from 
a Smalltalk image.

The "!" here is not actually part of Smalltalk syntax proper but is used as a 
delimiter in a marshalled statement telling the marshaller where to file in 
the following method.

> withAllChildrenDo: aBlock
> 	aBlock value: self.
> 	children ifNotNil: [children do: [:c | c withAllChildrenDo:
> aBlock]]! !
>
> As I said before, I don't "get" Smalltalk. However, what I can see
> here is that there's four different symbols (!, :, |, []), and at
> least one of them does double-duty (:). It's not very clear at all
> -- in a reading sense -- what this does. I suspect that the
> equivalent Ruby is more readable, not least because it uses fewer
> symbols.

No exact equivalence in Ruby:

def recurseTree(&blk)
	aBlock = self  # pseudocode
	children.each do {|c| c recurseTree(aBlock)}
end

Hmmm...I see five different symbols here, 
and one of them does double duty (|)
Maybe you can write a recursive tree walking method in Ruby with fewer lines 
of code and fewer symbols.  I didn't really try hard and I cheated with 
"aBlock = self".

 (Note: we may actually be in violent agreement here, given
> your comments regarding "images", but I'm not sure.)
>
> Also, my comments on RPN (and thus Forth and, at least to some
> degree, Smalltalk) are simply empirical in nature. We don't
> generally teach people 3 3 + when we're teaching math. 

RPN is not used in Smalltalk syntax.

Smalltalk:    x := 3 + 3
Ruby:          x = 3 + 3

> It doesn't
> follow most human languages in order -- it's SOV ("three and three
> add") where as most human languages are SVO ("three add three") or
> VSO ("add three and three"). It requires a different sort of logic
> to read SOV-ordered concepts.

Agreed.  I don't like it either.

>
> When you add these two items together, then it's not a leap to
> suggest that Smalltalk is harder to read and it doesn't seem as
> natural as a "conventional" language. This doesn't mean that
> Smalltalk is better or worse, but just *harder* to read.

ANY language that you do NOT know is harder to read than one you DO know.
So what's your point?

>
> -austin
> -- Austin Ziegler, austin@halostatue.ca on 2002.11.03 at 15.19.34

-- 
"I invented the term Object-Oriented, and I can 
tell you I did not have C++ in mind."
                                            -Alan Kay