Hi,

In message "[ruby-talk:6995] block syntax/def syntax question/suggestion"
    on 00/12/10, Phil Tomson <ptkwt / user2.teleport.com> writes:

|Being very new to Ruby (2-3 days) and very familiar with Perl, I tend to
|prefer { .. } for block delimiters.  From what I can tell in Ruby you can
|use either do .. end or { .. } for blocks.  What if that flexibility was
|also allowed for method definitions so that you could have:

Request like this arise time to time.  But

  (a) Ruby should remain Ruby.  So the syntax enhancement should done
      in compatible way.

  (b) The human brain is very flexible enough to handle several syntax
      at the same time, like me using Japanese and English.  The
      grammatical variety does not help programmers in real life, but
      often bring troubles to them, making programs appear unstable.

  (c) Proper tool like ruby-mode.el for Emacs helps.

  (d) Despite all the sentences above, I don't refuse syntax
      enhancement.  But it's hard to design compatible enhancement.  I
      have tried several times (the first one was at 1995), and all my
      trials failed.

In a word, although I believe in TMTOWTDI, variety of core syntax
might be too much.

							matz.

By the way, "There's More Than One LANGUAGE to Do it" was the word of
Larry Wall at the Perl/Ruby Conference in Kyoto.