[ruby-talk:8913] Re: bug??

matz:
> Sorry for being terse (as always).  

No need to be sorry. I guess people appreciate the time you put in designing
and implementing Ruby instead of just writing. OTOH, we approach the time
when more and more people want to know why the design is like it is. And
when they want, they can always explicitly ask for it.

Additionally, your writing style encourages own thinking instead of teaching
people to rely on your words. I hope it encourages me, at least ;).

> with presentation at the Linux Expo Paris.

Oh, I'd love to participate. I guess it's impossible for me this time. Maybe
next time...

> |  h = Hash.new { "bar" }.replace h   # seems a bit tedious
> Will this really happen?  Often enough to avoid tediousness?

Yes, now I see. We're approaching this problem from different angles. I
agree that there's seldom need for changing default initializer. I'm pretty
sure it will happen, but maybe not so often.

Even so, I was offsetting the disadvantages of having one more method in
public interface with the idea I'll end up having a hash so big it's taking
almost all the memory (well, at least half of it). Then the duplication
might not be possible, or at least it's very slow.

The problem could be avoided by coding as we have done so far (explicitly
checking and initializing when needed). Or by changing default initializer.

From my view point ending up in that tricky situation, which might require
me to add explicit initializations everywhere in the code instead of making
a simple call to change default initializator, is very disgusting. But
that's largely due my inexperience of designing public APIs and experience
of the side where it's convenience which matters.

The learning time of larger API it takes for hordes of new programmers is
probably bigger than the time savings in rare situations where
Hash#default_initializer= would be in use.

Thus, I'm not pushing this feature. But I have one more argument.

If default_initializer= shouldn't be there, should default= ? If we're not
going to remove it, I'd add block form for the sake of consistency.

	- Aleksi