Why Ruby?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 12/10/10 5:41 PM, Ary Borenszweig wrote:
> Yes, haha, that "unless" part is a bit silly. :-P
>
> The interesting part comes when he talks about the testing philosophy,
> the beauty of code and the focus on the happiness of programmers.

I watched the entire talk now. Quite entertaining, but there are a few 
things that don't quite sit all that well. I am in fact fairly surprised 
that you found it insightful.

One is, the talk starts with this extreme syntax exegesis where the 
position of literally every space and every letter matters a lot, and 
how exactly one choice for each is perfect and no other. Then a large 
part of the talk is dedicated to more or less successful metaphors and 
comparisons centered on freedom. This to me amounts to a guy who would 
want the freedom to smoke pot, but would beat his wife if she didn't 
align the towels on the bathroom rack.

Now, the part about freedom is also a bit odd. The discussion is about 
freedom in a system that confines _from day one_ a memory model on you 
that makes a great deal of things difficult or impossible.



Andrei