Comments on: My Fundamental Issue with Ruby http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/my-fundamental-issue-with-ruby/ programming, politics, & other religious issues Sat, 28 Aug 2010 04:27:21 +0000 hourly 1 By: Ruby is the Future | Enfranchised Mind http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/my-fundamental-issue-with-ruby/#comment-34332 Ruby is the Future | Enfranchised Mind Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:06:40 +0000 http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2009/02/01/my-fundamental-issue-with-ruby/#comment-34332 [...] a whole lifetime of ranting against it (cite, cite, cite, cite), I finally have to eat my words, come out, and say it: Ruby is the language of the [...] [...] a whole lifetime of ranting against it (cite, cite, cite, cite), I finally have to eat my words, come out, and say it: Ruby is the language of the [...]

]]> By: More Ruby Type Weirdness | Enfranchised Mind http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/my-fundamental-issue-with-ruby/#comment-34248 More Ruby Type Weirdness | Enfranchised Mind Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:24:45 +0000 http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2009/02/01/my-fundamental-issue-with-ruby/#comment-34248 [...] in My Fundamental Issue with Ruby, I complained about Ruby’s types without the ability to work with/understand [...] [...] in My Fundamental Issue with Ruby, I complained about Ruby’s types without the ability to work with/understand [...]

]]> By: Robert Fischer http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/my-fundamental-issue-with-ruby/#comment-34162 Robert Fischer Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:47:29 +0000 http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2009/02/01/my-fundamental-issue-with-ruby/#comment-34162 @Bill Mill The fact that such a turd is in Ruby's standard library is exactly my point. Saying "don't do that" or "the documentation covers that" is a very, very poor excuse for a bad type system. Sometimes people do things they shouldn't, and sometimes the documentation is very poor. Sometimes doing things that way or adding external documentation (that is, documentation that isn't code itself) is the more painful route. In that case, explicit typing is nice -- it provides the inline documentation with a free code check to ensure your documentation isn't out of sync with reality! At the end of all of this, that's my point. I'd be a much bigger fan of Ruby if it got off the fence, and either had more explicit typing or less strict types. It seems to be straddling a point that gives it the worst of both worlds. @Bill Mill

The fact that such a turd is in Ruby’s standard library is exactly my point. Saying “don’t do that” or “the documentation covers that” is a very, very poor excuse for a bad type system. Sometimes people do things they shouldn’t, and sometimes the documentation is very poor. Sometimes doing things that way or adding external documentation (that is, documentation that isn’t code itself) is the more painful route. In that case, explicit typing is nice — it provides the inline documentation with a free code check to ensure your documentation isn’t out of sync with reality!

At the end of all of this, that’s my point. I’d be a much bigger fan of Ruby if it got off the fence, and either had more explicit typing or less strict types. It seems to be straddling a point that gives it the worst of both worlds.

]]> By: Bill Mill http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/my-fundamental-issue-with-ruby/#comment-34161 Bill Mill Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:40:44 +0000 http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2009/02/01/my-fundamental-issue-with-ruby/#comment-34161 @Michael "5" is of course a string-like variable (it's a string!) but it annoys me when languages (like perl, php, and vb) will auto-cast it to a numeric value because they "do what I mean". @Robert I'm not defending REXML! That library is a particular turd by any standards (<a href="http://twitter.com/llimllib/statuses/948766787" rel="nofollow">evidence</a>). @Michael “5″ is of course a string-like variable (it’s a string!) but it annoys me when languages (like perl, php, and vb) will auto-cast it to a numeric value because they “do what I mean”.

@Robert I’m not defending REXML! That library is a particular turd by any standards (evidence).

]]> By: Robert Fischer http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/my-fundamental-issue-with-ruby/#comment-34160 Robert Fischer Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:16:41 +0000 http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2009/02/01/my-fundamental-issue-with-ruby/#comment-34160 @J D Yeah, it's pretty common to encounter Ruby code that says something like "responds to #to_i and returns an integer". At that point, though, aren't you basically just specifying a type? Sure, it's a type with one member -- "#to_i" -- but it's still a type. Why not just ask for an integer? And, if you're going to just ask for an integer, why not have an automatic check to make sure the thing passed in is an integer? Even more so, I note that that kind of maneuver just destroyed the very advantage offered by duck typing in the first place. What if I really did want to pass in a vorpal sword, and let it get +3'ed and the result printed out? The "#to_i" approach undercuts that capability completely. @J D

Yeah, it’s pretty common to encounter Ruby code that says something like “responds to #to_i and returns an integer”. At that point, though, aren’t you basically just specifying a type? Sure, it’s a type with one member — “#to_i” — but it’s still a type. Why not just ask for an integer? And, if you’re going to just ask for an integer, why not have an automatic check to make sure the thing passed in is an integer?

Even more so, I note that that kind of maneuver just destroyed the very advantage offered by duck typing in the first place. What if I really did want to pass in a vorpal sword, and let it get +3′ed and the result printed out? The “#to_i” approach undercuts that capability completely.

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