Why Ruby?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 12/19/10 6:26 AM, retard wrote:
> Sat, 18 Dec 2010 16:01:37 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:
>
>> Simen kjaeraas wrote:
>>> The problem of D's lambda syntax is it is optimized for longer
>>> functions. Usually, the delegates I write are one line long. I cannot
>>> see that this syntax collides with anything at the moment, but feel
>>> free to enlighten me:
>>>
>>> { =>  4; }
>>> { a =>  2*a; }
>>> { a, b =>  a>b; }
>>> { =>  @ + @; } // turns into { a, b =>  a + b; }
>>>
>>>
>> If size and simplicity of typing are critical, are those really better
>> than:
>>
>>     "a>b"
>
> In case you didn't see, two additional problems were also listed earlier
> in this thread:
>
>   - template bloat (different strings generate new instances of the sort
> in the sorting example)

This can be solved by using a canonicalizer before passing to unaryFun. 
I considered doing that, but delayed implementing it to when this would 
actually become a problem.

>   - symbol visibility problems because of wrong scoping

Scoping is not wrong, it's just different :o). I agree that that can be 
an issue - in which case you take the enormous hit of writing (a, b) { 
stmts }, of which the proposals passionately discussed within save a 
grand total of around four characters.

Again: to what extent does this help on becoming able to do what you 
want to do in D, and where is implementing this ranked in comparison to 
the other work items?


Andrei