Hi --

On Sat, 27 Oct 2007, David Flanagan wrote:

> Rick DeNatale wrote:
>> On 10/26/07, Berger, Daniel <Daniel.Berger / qwest.com> wrote:
>>> I'd much prefer Ruby not accept the 'fluent' style. It's a style I used
>>> to see in my Perl programming days. I didn't like it then and I don't
>>> like it now. If you're chaining so many methods that you feel compelled
>>> to put them on separate lines, you've probably got larger issues.
>>> 
>>> Thumbs down.
>> 
>> All joking about turning Ruby into Fortran or PL/I aside, I think I
>> have to agree with Dan.
>> 
>> Although I sometimes split a statement over several lines, it's
>> usually because I've got a lengthy argument list. e.g. in Rails
>>
>>     model = MyModel.create! (
>>                       :attribute1 => value1,
>>                       :attribute 2 => value 2,
>>           ...
>>                       :attributeN => valueN
>>                  )
>> 
>> I don't see the value in being able to move just a method name to
>> another line worth the loss of readibility when I miss that little .
>> 
>
> Dan: I think that fluent interfaces will soon be trendy. I don't see how it 
> can hurt to have Ruby allow them naturally.  Ruby is a multi-paradigm 
> language, right?  :-)

Yes, but not a kitchen-sink language. I don't think Ruby is obliged to
mold itself to every trend. I really don't want to have to visually
parse things like this:

    str = "david"
    .upcase

> Rick: it seems to me that while one dot might be easy to miss, the vertical 
> line of dots that occurs (in what I think would be the typical usage) would 
> be quite hard to miss.

Ugly and against the grain, but hard to miss :-)


David

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