On May 18, 12:58 pm, "Eric Mahurin" <eric.mahu... / gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/18/07, Austin Ziegler <halosta... / gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On 5/18/07, Eric Mahurin <eric.mahu... / gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 5/18/07, Yukihiro Matsumoto <m... / ruby-lang.org> wrote:
> > > I've picked up onpythonin the last couple months and like the
> > > indentation.   In addition to forced readablity, I find another
> > > practical benefit is that it eliminates hard to track down syntax
> > > errors due to matching {}, begin/end, etc.  In ruby, C, perl, etc
> > > these errors can be painful to track down in a large file with lots of
> > > blocks within blocks.
>
> > Scope indicated by whitespace is an indication, IMO, that the compiler
> > thinks that it knows better than you do.
>
> > Always a mistake.
>
> > I want a programming language that works how I do; I don't want to
> > have to work how a stupid programming language requires it.
>
> > (I sometimes put debug statements flush left so that it's a simple
> > /^p<CR> to search for them. Can't do that with scope controlled by
> > whitespace. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.)
>
> That is the exact same case I find the indentation thing gets in the
> way.  I had to change my way of putting in print debug statements
> (same as yours).  Every language makes you change your ways a bit.  Of
> course python's debug facilities (pdb) are much better than ruby's so

Well, I think that's going to change over the next year. If you
haven't tried Ken Sibilev's ruby-debug, http://rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-debug/
give it a shot. Over the last year it has improved quite a bit and I
expect over the next year it will make the same steady progress. I'm
hoping the next release will have a user manual, and possibly start
adding some regression tests (which by the way pdb doesn't currently
have).

As someone who's a little bit familiar with both debuggers, I think
the design of ruby-debug is the cleaner and more flexible. In fact, I
think it's the best organized debugger of any that I've seen so far.
(But then. as it grows..)