I’ve got so much to write stored up! I’ve been driving my spare computer time into the Sudoku application and haven’t had a chance to work on the literary angle. I want to write about:
- Keira Knightley’s teeth of doom
- The Mellies
- My work at work (hint)
- Learning Ruby and Ajax
- Other Things (tm)
Keep your eyes peeled, I’ll be making up for missing in action shortly.
March 7th, 2006 at 7:12 am
I noted the Ruby philosophy. Is that an important new thought, or just a conceit of the designer?
March 7th, 2006 at 8:12 am
Yes indeed I think the answer to your question is “both”. On the one hand it is some sort of edict sprung from the head of the man, on the other hand, it is surprisingly absent in most programming languages’ design.
I’m sure he didn’t think it up, but scripting languages have been going through a real shakedown in user use-ability.
Perl is the freest, and frequently (can! I say only can!) become the most absolutely miserable to look at, as a human.
Python tries to fix this with use of whitespace thus:
|_____start
is different from
|____start
or even
|__start
Many programmers think that whitespace sensitivity is particularly un-stylish. The alternative is using bracing ({}) which seems to make more sense to me.
Ruby tries to fuse the two, using braces, not whitespace, but trying to make things pretty along the way. Thus, a Perl / Python hybrid.
At the end of the day though, you learn one language you’ve learnt them all. At some level it’s all just syntax.