elseif v. elsif ??

[Bill Kelly]

Well this is what you get if you force an already angry person to learn
a butt ugly language because some managor never heard of anything other
than ASP.Net, Java and Ruby on Rails. And decided (under these
conditions correctly) that the best option is RoR.

It's true. Perl is unquestionably the least butt-ugly language ever.



<3

Bill

 

[Jenda Krynicky]

FWIW, I understand this is/has changed in ruby 1.9, so that block
parameters are always local to the block.

Makes sense. Except that it's a backwards incompatible change.

I don't see why can't the rubyists accept that sometimes it does make
sense to be able to explicitely declare a variable, to explicitely mark
an assignment as being more than as assignment, but rather also a
variable declaration. Even if allowing myself to ask Ruby to report a
compiletime error if I do not mark the first assignments is out of
question.

Jenda

 

[John Joyce]

Jenda, certainly u b trollin'
"rubyists" accept whatever it is. Not all changes need to be
backward compatible. If changes are well documented and reduce
unintended side-effects, then they're fine and easy enough to fix.

 

[Samantha]

The Pickaxe has some severe shortcomings as an instructional text for
people who are not experienced programmers. It's a great book in many
ways, but for a newbie programmer, not so much. It assumes a fair bit
of foreknowledge.

I'm glad Messrs. Thomas and Hunt didn't decide to try to make the
Pickaxe everything to everyone. Books that result from such an attempt
tend to be notoriously bad at being anything to anyone. Pick a target
audience for your book, and stick to it -- you'll have better luck that
way. The Pickaxe is great within its niche. Just don't make the
mistake of thinking that niche is for people who are new to programming.

I bought the Pickaxe and did great with it for the first few chapters.
I read it religiously. Big game - Michigan vs. Ohio State. (GO BLUE!)
I brought the Pickaxe with me to the 'in-law's' and read the book while
my partner watched the game. I was glued to it.

But, at a certain point, I got lost. Even though I had gone through the
Pine tutorial (not as thoroughly as I should have, but I have a crappy
attention span), and even though I had taken a logic and design course
in school... I got lost.

I have found that just eventually writing little stupid things and
seeing what tweaks I could make to those little tweaks, as well as
asking questions on this list, participating with my Ruby Mentor(s), and
going through code has been invaluable.

Now, I'm starting to go through the Pickaxe again, with a little bit
more experience and understanding this time. I'm nowhere near the skill
level of being able to write wonderful applications/programs, but I'm
better than when I first posted to this list. I'm even highlighting
things now. Wahoo!

-Samantha