From: "Todd" <toddkennethbenson / yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
Subject: Re: Ideas on "Why Living Dangerous can be A Good Thing" in
Ruby?
Date: Sun, 08 Jan 2006 13:16:52 -0800


James Edward Gray II wrote:
> On Jan 8, 2006, at 2:21 PM, Gregory Brown wrote:
>
> > How would you (the community) define meta-programming
>
> Code that writes code.

A shiver goes up my spine :)

>
> > open class system
>
> Classes that can be changed (methods added, removed, etc.) at runtime.

Scary.

> > and the dynamic nature of ruby?
>
> That's a lot harder.  :)
>
> I like to think that Ruby does away with much of the compile time vs
> runtime separation and that is a big source of it's dynamic nature.
>
> You will need a better definition than that though, of course...  ;)
>
> James Edward Gray II

The programmer in me loves Ruby for it's relative simplicity (coupled
with relative complexity if need be).  The IT and DBA in me shudders at
the thought that such a thing exists, simply because data integrity
should be paramount!  More important than your family, for God's sake!
It has to be something you can put your foot on and be sure it won't
move.

I mean, here you have a black box that a few moments from now may not
be a black box anymore!  It may turn green...  It may pop out at you
like those fond memories of the jack-in-the-box.  You look at it, prod
it, it isn't reliable (you posit), it doesn't come up like the sun in
the morning every day, and start to feel there's some deep and dark
sinister purpose waiting to be unleashed.  This program, this thing,
suddenly feels like almost sort of a Pandora's box.  In that moment of
inspiration, you quickly walk away feeling better about yourself for
suggesting another, more 'stable', language that you can use.  The CIO
will be proud :)

At least, that was my first impression.  That, until I started seeing
how impressive not only the coding practices were, but also the
incredible knowledge base in the Ruby community.  Not to mention how
it has made my life a bit easier.

It is rather simple to program malicious code in Ruby, but that may be
quite
possible in any programming medium.

Todd