In article <11753504194.20040116221112 / scriptolutions.com>,
Lothar Scholz  <mailinglists / scriptolutions.com> wrote:
: Hello gabriele,
: 
: Friday, January 16, 2004, 9:35:05 PM, you wrote:
: 
: gr> please forgive me, I'm dumb. 
: gr> What's wrong with adding features to base classes?
: gr> Possibly the problem is ovverriding methods, I suppose,
: gr> but you'll get a warning for that..
: 
: It's simply the danger of a namespace clash. At least if short and
: simple names are used as i have seen as a suggestion in a ruby book.
: 
: At least library developer should avoid this as hell.

Smart developers know when this kind of thing is appropriate and
when it isn't.  Ruby is a language for smart people, and one of
the facets of its design is letting the Ruby programmer make that
judgement call.

If you try to design a programming language for programmers who
aren't very smart, only programmers who aren't very smart will
want to use it.

--Dave