From: Aredridel <aredridel@...>
Date: 2003-07-11T23:03:38+09:00
Subject: Re: OSCON report


> I was following along, agreeing with the presentation, until he said
> "Simplicity is NOT a Goal".

I just paged through and read that too.  It surprised me, but I looked
at the link -- http://paulgraham.com/power.html -- and read it.  I was
surprised at what he had to say, too.

Ruby isn't simple.  It's easy to do simple things in, but that's not the
same at all.  It's complex in a real sort of way: it models things
well.  Real software has messy side-effects, edge-cases, and exceptions
to the rules.  Ruby supports all that.  

I think I rather like simplicity not being a goal... if simplicity were
a high priority, you end up with a stripped, featureless language (BASIC
is simple...).  Instead, ruby makes things easy, which I find more
useful.  A large but well-named API is easily navigable with a single,
fairly complete set of documentation.  (Add ri, and it's even better --
self documenting to an extent).  A small, over-simple API takes hours of
perusing messageboards for the solution to something that should have
been included.  I do this with PHP regularly still, after years of using
it.  My friend who develops in Filemaker on the mac, with it's /tiny/
and extremely limited API spends most of his time inventing hacks to
make things do what he wants.

Simple is good.  Complete is better.  Low-stress is the best.