From: Enric Lafont <enric@1smart.com>
Date: 2002-11-04T18:24:56+09:00
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Ruby

Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:

>Hi,
>
>In message "Re: Thoughts on Ruby"
>    on 02/11/03, Albert Wagner <alwagner@tcac.net> writes:
>
>|Smalltalk is pure OOP.  Ruby is not.  In Smalltalk the "operators" are simply 
>|messages to an object.  In Ruby "operators" are neither objects nor messages, 
>|but are rather handled as in more conventional languages.  I don't know why 
>|Matz only went part way.   This part-way-ness is also visible in other 
>|aspects of the language such as "if", "while", etc.  In Ruby these things 
>|also are neither object nor message. Whereas in Smalltalk, such constructs 
>|are messages to a Boolean object. 
>
>They simply cannot implemented as methods.
>
>"=" is assignment, which is not a method even in Smalltalk (:=).
>""and", "or" and ".." are control structures, which also are *not*
>methods in most implementation of Smalltalk.
>  
>
Yes you're right, ":=" and "." are language structures in Smalltalk as 
are "(", ")" , "<" (subclass), "<<" and others in Ruby.

But, some others like "and", "or", "..", "..." ,  etc ... can be equally 
solved with a more purist aproach, yes, it's your language and you 
decide what is best for him, this is just a suggestion you may not like :-)

Enric