On Dec 10, 10:30 am, "Just Another Victim of the Ambient Morality"
<ihates... / hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Todd Benson" <caduce... / gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:eaeff8c10712090954k3304961tb8fc1be4a7531ab8 / mail.gmail.com...
>
>
>
> > On Dec 9, 2007 11:39 AM, Dumaiu <Dym... / gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Dec 9, 12:19 pm, Todd Benson <caduce... / gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> <snippy>
>
> >> > > > 2)  Accidentally creating a new variable.
>
> >> > This is a danger that will plague any language, IMO.
>
> >>     To be fair, it has to be said that it is less of a problem in
> >> languages that require variables to be declared or typed.
>
> > Hmm.  Maybe, but I kind of doubt it.  var temp is no more or less
> > succinct than anything else.  It doesn't guarantee you "safeness".
> > Safeness is what databases are for.  Pre-declaration is sort of an
> > empty promise in flow-control.
>
>     You're really not thinking this through.
>     How on God's green Earth are you going to accidentally prepend an
> extraneous "var " (or whatever keyword is decided upon) to a variable's
> assignment.  Because this is highly unlikely, the described problem will
> only happen if you accidentally want to declare a new variable.  This is
> rather distinct from wanting to use a variable and so the bug should occur
> far less frequently...

Far less frequent, given the way you do things now...but just wait
until "var" is the norm; you'll be saying the opposite. When you're
used to typing "var" for everything, you'll inevitably use it in
places you don't mean it. Then the complaint will be that ruby allows
*too much* control. The basic fact is that programmers are fallible,
and no matter how much "safety" is built into the language; there will
still be error between user and keyboard. I might ask how on God's
green earth one could type "liist" instead of "list'...but it happens
anyhow, despite my incredulity.

Regards,
Jordan