James Britt (rubydev) wrote:

>> Yes, Ruby is written in C, but this is one of those neccessary evils.  If
>> we had a Ruby -> Native compiler, I'd wager we'd drop the C dependancy
>> ASAP.
> 
> And write Ruby in Ruby?

Yeah :-)  Isn't that the test of a "non-trivial" programming language?  
That you can write the language processor itself in the language?

> There has been an interesting thread on xml-dev about who is using DOM or
> SAX, and whether people are making the best choice.  While the majority of
> XML developers may use a tree, this may be simply because they are
> unfamiliar with event-based programming.

Perhaps.  I'd argue that DOM is more OO, while SAX is more procedural, and 
that (therefore) DOM is superior.  In any case, this isn't a discussion for 
this group, and it certainly hasn't been proven that event-based 
programming is superior.  Suffice it to say that *I* use tree parsing, as 
do most people, and we're not likely to change anytime soon.  ;-P

> Now, I don't know that Ruby should include something simple because it's
> what potential users might be most familiar with, if that

If you include an API that almost nobody uses, they'll use something else, 
and you're back where you started.

>> I'd also rather not see two different XML processors bundled with Ruby,
>> for obvious reasons.
> 
> Why?

I prefer a more cohesive approach; similar metaphors, naming schemes, and 
so on.  Mainly, however, including multiple processors is going to result 
in much redundant code, which should be avoided.  This is just my 
opinion.

--- SER