From: James Britt <jamesUNDERBARb@...>
Date: 2004-03-24T00:57:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby style guidance

gabriele renzi wrote:

> il Tue, 23 Mar 2004 06:25:36 -0800, "David A. Black"
> <dblack@wobblini.net> ha scritto::
> 
> 
>>Hi --
>>
>>On Tue, 23 Mar 2004, gabriele renzi wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Seriously, it would be nice to have some kind of Style Guidelines
>>>somewhere (like using CamelCase for classes and under_scores for
>>>methods, provide block form for accessing resource that need to be
>>>freed and so on)

There's a sort-of style guide on the rubygarden wiki, but it conflates 
style guidelines with idiomatic coding techniques.

I suggest:

Style guideline = naming conventions; use of do/end vs. { ... }; indentation

Ruby idioms = Using blocks to manage resource allocation and release; 
use of ||= to assign only if variable has no current value, etc.

I'd rather see these two things maintained separately, so that newcomers 
can first pick up the proper coding *style*, then start using Ruby Way 
coding *techniques* as they learn the reasoning behind them.

(And I think that may define the difference between code style and 
idiomatic technique; the former is largely aesthetic, while the latter 
is best practice based on the features of the language.)


James