std.xml should just go

[Walter Bright]

Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2011-02-04 20:33, Walter Bright wrote:
>> so wrote:
>>> It doesn't matter what signature you use for the function, compiler is
>>> aware and will output an error when you do the opposite of the
>>> signature. If this is the case, why do we need that signature?
>>
>>
>> Examine the API of a function in a library. It says it doesn't modify
>> anything reachable through its arguments, but is that true? How would
>> you know? And how would you know if the API doc doesn't say?
>>
>> You'd fall back to const by convention, and that is not reliable and
>> does not scale.
> 
> This is quite interesting, I generally agree with this but on the other 
> hand Ruby on Rails is basically built on conventions, it works out very 
> well and I love it.

I'm not tapped into the ruby community, but I've heard some scuttlebutt that 
usage of ruby is declining in large systems because ruby seems to have problems 
with large systems due to "monkey patching" and other cowboying that ruby 
encourages.