From: Iain 'Spoon' Truskett <spoon@...>
Date: 2002-12-06T08:13:43+09:00
Subject: Re: elseif?

* Shannon Fang (xrfang@hotmail.com) [06 Dec 2002 09:56]:

[...]
> The problem with elsif is that I think all major lanugages, C/C++ Pascal
> Basic... are not using such strange thing.

You should probably be careful using terms as 'major languages'
(similarly 'scripting languages'). After all, you're suggesting that
Perl is not a major language =) Of course, once Ruby takes over the
world it'll be a major language too.

> When I type in "else if" and "elseif" in ruby, it doesn't work... It
> makes learning a bit not-so-straightforward...

After learning a few languages you become used to some things being
different. elif/elsif/'else if'. do { } while() / loop .. until ().
my/dim/type.

Ruby has its own special addons too. What other language has a return
value from its 'if' statement? It also as 0 being true. Where else is
that?

Thus sharing 'elsif' with at least one other language shouldn't be that
much of a problem.

> I think for most people here, ruby is not the first lanugage, but ruby
> is definitely among the best, if not THE best. As an incentive to
> learn a second, third, fourth... lanugage, it must be easy to learn...

I don't know about you, but the more languages I learn, the more easily
I learn languages.

The only ones I've had trouble with are Java (due to having to navigate
that class library) and C++ (lack of effort mostly, and a vague fear of
the STL being like Java's class library). The actual languages (without
libraries) I picked up quickly =)


Apologies if I come off a bit argumentative: I've been writing
argumentative things recently.


cheers,
-- 
Iain.