From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2002-12-08T08:19:57+09:00
Subject: Re: (OT) Re: elseif?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Thomas" <dave@pragprog.com>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 07, 2002 2:23 PM
Subject: Re: (OT) Re: elseif?


> On Sat, 2002-12-07 at 13:04, Hal E. Fulton wrote:
> >
> > But of course, it's the kai-zen principle at work. Take a hundred
> > baby steps forward, and suddenly it looks like a giant quantum leap.
> > That, I think, is why we like Ruby -- or part of the reason -- or
> > that's true for me, anyway.
> 
> Unfortunately, many folks seem to feel that continuous improvement means
> continuous accretion of features. I have a theory that in really, really
> good designs, the total amount of *stuff* stays the same over time. As
> improvements are added, less good things are discarded.
> 
> This isn't easy in a programming language, where throwing stuff away
> breaks backward compatibility.

That may be true, within limits... I think even a good design
has some elasticity in it. I certainly don't favor endless
expansion, but neither would I favor dumping something every
time a feature was added.

And no design is so good that it does not ultimately lead to 
greater things.

Ruby is my favorite language -- for what my opinion is worth, 
as I'm not a language fanatic. But I don't expect it will
*always* be my favorite language. In 2016, I hope to be 
programming in something I like better, if my brain has not
fossillized. And I hope it is something that borrows heavily
from Ruby, and learns from mistakes that we don't even yet
perceive.

But now I'm just indulging in idle dreaming.

Hal