From: Shannon Fang <xrfang@...>
Date: 2002-12-01T05:27:58+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Document

Hi all in this discussion,

My comments on the document of Ruby is actually an abreaction of my unsatisfaction toward C++. 
In my mind, a good language should have 2 features:

1. Easy to use and highly efficient programming (such as ruby)
2. Easy to learn and hard to forget even you don't use it for a long time (such as C and Pascal, 
but not C++ and delphi).

I learned C++ in 1993, I thought I can programming using the language. But I was wrong. During these
years, C++ is changing rapidly, and become more and more incomprehensible. I think a good language
will depend on it's internal mechanism, not on some piculiar "syntax sugar". 
For example, C++ introduced the use of template, which seems very
interesting and efficient, but it required me to learn the new syntax of
how to use template. As a contract, Ruby's polymophism achieved the same
effect, and more elligently. So Ruby is better on this comparison.

I hate piculiar symbols to express some obvious meanings. for example:

in C++ ~ means destructor. While in delphi, there's a keyword
"destructor", which is much clearer. A lot of my example are anti-C++...

And in ruby, attr_reader :name, and def name... end, while in Delphi, it
is "property name". Again delphi is easier to comprehend, and hence
harder to forget. Of course, when you know the meaning of attr_reader it
is as simple as "property", but for beginer, like me, who knows oop, but
new to ruby, it doesn't make sense at the beginning.

Regards,
Shannon