[ruby-talk:5579] Re: Flame-bait and this is private post

Hi,

I feel it's appropriate to talk about this topic in the list, unless
it goes to a flame war.  So I put back the personal message to the list.

In message "Re: Flame-bait and this is private post"
    on 00/10/16, "Everett L.(Rett) Williams" <[e-mail]> writes:

|Language chauvinism is no more attractive than any other form of
|chauvinism.

Well, if you felt language chauvinism in my words, that was not what I
meant.  In fact, I am opposite to language chauvinism to any specific
natural language (including Japanese and English).  You felt like that
probably due to my lack of English skills.

I agree that the method invocation syntax in Ruby

  receiver.method(arguments)

resembles

  Subject Verb Objectives

in English, and receiver often corresponds to the single real world
entity.  So I feel sympathy to the people who want method names in the
form of third person singular, e.g. exists, has_key, etc.

But I decided not to do so, because of the following 2 reasons.

 (1) As you said, I borrowed a lot of WORDS from English.  But I don't
     want to make Ruby programmers to know English SYNTAX.  My oldest
     child will learn Ruby programming in several years (she is 8
     now).  But it'll take years for her to learn English grammar.
     She can memorize some alphabetical sequences.  In this case, I
     want her to learn programming, not English.

     In fact, array.sort should be a wrong method name if English
     correctness is pursued, for example.

 (2) You didn't claim all method names which are verbs should be in
     the form of third person.  Some verbs in the third person make
     you feel natural; others not.  Knowledge of English grammar is
     required to distinguish this, I think.  Again I want to be apart
     from English grammar.

Despite all the excuses I listed above, in conclusion, it's all up to
the taste of programmer.  Some hate them, some love them, most don't
care.

							matz.