On 29 April 2014 03:48, Sean P. DeNigris <[email protected]> wrote: > Esteban A. Maringolo wrote >> Plays well with "choose your favorite text editor" (Sublime, Vim, >> etc.) and IDEs (RubyMine, etc.), with source control systems (any file >> based system), with unix in general (several cli commands), has >> binding for any major/mainstream library* (databases, network, etc.). > > But again these boil down to community size/interest > - To use "your favorite text editor", Craig Latta serves Smalltalk via > WebDav [1], but who has jumped at this opportunity? > - source control - now that there is community interest, progress on git > support has been moving ahead rapidly with minimal resources > - unix in general - with FFI and OSProcess, what can't you do? Are we > talking about the lack of cool Ruby backtick syntax? While definitely cool, > that special-purpose syntax is the kind of cognitive load Smalltalk > overcomes. All those little syntactical twists and turns to remember lead > away from "syntax on a T-shirt" to manuals with hundreds of pages > - bindings - again, obviously just a question of community size and interest
Backtick syntax is largely bogus anyway. It's a minor string interpolation trick with a special evaluation strategy. And I entirely agree that Ruby has (way, WAY) too much syntax. > So the "play well with others" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are no > bindings because there are no people to write them because there are no > bindings... At inception, Ruby (and every other language) didn't have those > bindings either. That's largely true, in the sense that someone needs to grab a shovel to dig that trench. But if you start out with an external text editor, with an external version control system, with (only) stdout/stderr/stdin, you end up building a different system than if you're already in an insular environment and want/need to learn to "play well with others". Ruby plays well with other - interfaces well with external systems - precisely because it didn't have that integrated environment. Now sure, back in 1976 Smalltalk didn't either, but we're here in 2014, 18 years after Squeak budded off Apple Smalltalk: a tightly integrated environment is what we started from. frank > [1] > http://thiscontext.com/2011/06/09/my-favorite-text-editor-editing-a-spoon-webdav-filesystem/ > > > > ----- > Cheers, > Sean > -- > View this message in context: > http://forum.world.st/a-Pharo-talk-from-a-ruby-conference-tp4756805p4756900.html > Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com. >
