From: David Alan Black <dblack@...>
Date: 2000-12-18T21:40:24+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:7567] Re: flatten_by(n)

Hello --

On Mon, 18 Dec 2000, Conrad Schneiker wrote:

> David Alan Black writes,
> 
> # Comments/optimizations/whatever welcome.
> 
> Well, I hope when this thread winds up that these things (somehow) become 
> (provisional?) additions to Ruby, with one-level and n-level flattening 
> options. 
> 
> But more generally speaking, do we need something of a "sub-module RAA" of 
> sorts to collect and catalog for all the useful methods that people 
> continually come up with to deal with various tasks and problems that they 
> encounter? IMHO, yes. (We could still use modules for packaging these 
> mostly individual methods, I suppose, with some sort of mnemonic 
> class+method naming convention.)

I would love to see something like that -- a sort of dynamic Ruby
cookbook, or "method garden", where this kind of code could reside and
be made accessible.  I definitely feel that the weak link in the
chain, right now, is the question of what happens to all these
benchmarked, tested, tweaked methods after they've been worked through
here.

A few thoughts and/or questions about such a thing:

1. It would have to have some clear relation to whatever Ruby archive
might emerge from current discussions (Dave T.'s Wiki, etc.).  That
relation might be a "feed" one, or more sandbox-like.  But whatever --
it would have to be clear.  

2. Ditto for the whole question of things that end up as, or just
happen to overlap with, new Ruby features.  There would have to be
maintenance and pruning of the archive to reflect that fact.  

3. Would such a site/archive include mechanisms for discussion and
tweaking and so forth?  Or would it be assumed that the code submitted
had already been through such processes?  (I like the former approach
more -- nothing against finished products, and I don't want all
method-writing to disappear from this list, but it feels to me like
such a site should have a sort of workshop component to it.)


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack@candle.superlink.net
work: blackdav@shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav