From: Kevin Smith <sent@...>
Date: 2000-12-23T13:59:15+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:7989] Re: defined? problem?

Dave Thomas <Dave@PragmaticProgrammer.com> 
wrote:
>Kevin Smith <sent@qualitycode.com> writes:
>
>> Hold it right there. Is it really valid to 
>> "remember the fact that m is a variable"? It 
>> seems like that decision should be held off until 
>> runtime.
>
>Well, what happens is not that it remembers that m is a variable, but
>that it has seen m being treated as a variable.
>
>Holding it off until runtime also leads to undesirable side-effects.
>
>My feeling here is that we're making a compromise. For the convenience 
>of allowing parameterless method calls without parentheses, we
>occasionally force the interpreter to silently resolve ambiguities
>during the parse.

I guess another 'convenience' that is confusing 
things is allowing if-modifiers after the code, 
which I still don't like. I won't use them in my 
code, and this is yet another reason.

For me, saying 'a if b' is like those 
instructions for putting together a desk that 
say: 1) Glue part x to part y. 2) Before doing 
that, be sure to insert tab a into slot b. By the 
time I see what I should have done before I did 
it, it's too late and I've already done it.

Obviously perl-folk are used to that construct 
and have no problem with it. For me, it's just 
too weird.

Kevin