You wrote last Saturday, December 07, 2002 8:24 PM:
Democracy means ruling, not voicing an opinion Ruby is a “gentle
dictatorship.” From ruby-talk:5544:
Davide Marchignoli:
I do not know which is your development model, in any case I
would be glad to contribute both in the design and in the
implementation.
matz:
I chose the ‘gentle dictator’ model.
That is being modest, imho. (Reading) Matz mails does not show any sign of
dictatorship… so “gentleness” is not needed since it shows. I would rather
say, Matz holds the final decision and authority (w/c is logical, since
Matz after all is the Father of Ruby).
Hmmm. How about posting more tutorials and useful code and ideas for
Ruby advocacy instead?
I will definitely do that when I am as good as you, sir David.
But as of now, I am just a newbie. I post more questions than answers.
Sometimes, I throw questions, which I think might offend people of this list
(and w/c others might think as nuisance)… that is why I was asking if
there is an FAQ on the topic like “Things not expected/needed in Ruby -like
++, elseif,…”. If there is none, then I will contribute one, since this
just needs good reading and not good coding
But as of now, I am just a newbie. I post more questions than answers.
Sometimes, I throw questions, which I think might offend people of this list
(and w/c others might think as nuisance)… that is why I was asking if
there is an FAQ on the topic like “Things not expected/needed in Ruby -like
++, elseif,…”. If there is none, then I will contribute one, since this
just needs good reading and not good coding
I see what you mean more clearly – not just a kind of graveyard of
rejected ideas The “Things Newcomers Should Know” document is
probably a good place for at least some of these things.
There is a danger of getting too defensive, perhaps… Sometimes it
seems like Ruby is expected to justify every single difference between
itself and other languages (especially Perl and C), one by one, in a
way that (as far as I’ve seen) no other language is expected to. But
still, it can’t hurt to summarize discussions.
(And liberal mentions of the searchable ruby-talk archive at http://www.ruby-talk.org can’t hurt either
David
···
On Sat, 7 Dec 2002, [iso-8859-1] “Peña, Botp” wrote:
There is a danger of getting too defensive, perhaps… Sometimes it
seems like Ruby is expected to justify every single difference between
itself and other languages (especially Perl and C), one by one, in a
way that (as far as I’ve seen) no other language is expected to. But
still, it can’t hurt to summarize discussions.
I don’t know, I’ve seen that behavior in most languages I’ve started
learning. Somebody comes along and insists that Python have a “+=”
operator, or that Perl support “real OO”. Some folks are never satisfied
One might paraphrase thusly, “From that which gives much, much more is
expected.”
It seems that some (many?) confuse POLS with “there should be NO
surprises.” Of course, the reality is that with anything, due to lack of
expereience, someone will be surprised by something. The poetic view is
that languagaes, natural or computer, like life and love, would be quite
dull without at least a hint of mystery.
There is a danger of getting too defensive, perhaps… Sometimes it
seems like Ruby is expected to justify every single difference between
itself and other languages (especially Perl and C), one by one, in a
way that (as far as I’ve seen) no other language is expected to.
But as of now, I am just a newbie. I post more questions than answers.
Sometimes, I throw questions, which I think might offend people of this list
(and w/c others might think as nuisance)… that is why I was asking if
there is an FAQ on the topic like “Things not expected/needed in Ruby -like
++, elseif,…”. If there is none, then I will contribute one, since this
just needs good reading and not good coding
I see what you mean more clearly – not just a kind of graveyard of
rejected ideas The “Things Newcomers Should Know” document is
probably a good place for at least some of these things.
Hi David,
I am not sure if I want to include such things in the newcomers list. I
am trying to keep the document as short as possible (because I guess the
longer the document is, the less likely it will actually be read).
It seems that some (many?) confuse POLS with “there should be NO
surprises.” Of course, the reality is that with anything, due to
lack of expereience, someone will be surprised by something. The
poetic view is that languagaes, natural or computer, like life and
love, would be quite dull without at least a hint of mystery.
While hunting for “gentle dictator” citations before, I came
across this, from more than a year ago:
[question to matz about behavior of some method…]
My question still remains - why? Although I agree that this may be
convenient in some cases it contradicts the “Principle of Least
Surprise” (at least for me). Or else, why isn’t it implemented the
same way for hashes too?
[matz’s reply]
(a) because I thought it was useful (note: I don’t claim I’ve been
right).
(b) claiming PoLS is not allowed to complain about my decision. It’s
spared for the dictator.
So let’s not talk about PoLS, but talk about which is more useful.
When I first discovered Ruby, I went through the whole of the pickaxe book
being constantly surprised - “you can actually DO that?? … wow”
Tim Bates
···
On Sun, 8 Dec 2002 04:30 am, W. Kent Starr wrote:
It seems that some (many?) confuse POLS with “there should be NO
surprises.” Of course, the reality is that with anything, due to lack of
expereience, someone will be surprised by something. The poetic view is
that languagaes, natural or computer, like life and love, would be quite
dull without at least a hint of mystery.
I was once said that the very existence of Ruby violates the POLS,
for, who’d expect such a beautiful yet convenient language to exist?
[perhaps it was me, can’t remember :-)]
It seems that some (many?) confuse POLS with “there should be NO
surprises.” Of course, the reality is that with anything, due to
lack of expereience, someone will be surprised by something. The
poetic view is that languagaes, natural or computer, like life and
love, would be quite dull without at least a hint of mystery.
While hunting for “gentle dictator” citations before, I came
across this, from more than a year ago:
[question to matz about behavior of some method…]
My question still remains - why? Although I agree that this may be
convenient in some cases it contradicts the “Principle of Least
Surprise” (at least for me). Or else, why isn’t it implemented the
same way for hashes too?
[matz’s reply]
(a) because I thought it was useful (note: I don’t claim I’ve been
right).
(b) claiming PoLS is not allowed to complain about my decision. It’s
spared for the dictator.
So let’s not talk about PoLS, but talk about which is more useful.
Ruby is a “gentle
