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List: ruby-talk
Subject: Re: Refactoring Browsers (was: [ann] AEditor 0.10, folding added)
From: Albert Wagner <alwagner () tcac ! net>
Date: 2003-08-15 13:20:55
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On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 12:15:43 +0900
Dave Thomas <Dave@PragProg.com> wrote:
>
> On Thursday, August 14, 2003, at 09:51 PM, Avi Bryant wrote:
>
> > I believe that the only way Ruby will ever be able to have the same
> > level of tool support (of any kind, whether we're talking about code
> > browsers, refactoring tools, or version control systems) that
> > Smalltalk does is by making the same sacrifice that Smalltalk did:
> > to completely avoid any form of code generation or macros.
>
> That's fascinating: you've just clarified for me why I've always found
>
> it difficult to stick with Smalltalk. I've tried and tried, and yet
> it's always left me feeling flat. The thing for me is that I never
> really found the tradeoff (environment power vs. language power) to
> work too well for me.
>
> So, I'm guessing that this could well be another of those cat
> people/dog people kind of things. Some folks would rather have great
> tools and will sacrifice some language power, while others will
> sacrifice the tools for a language which is more expressive.
I don't think that this is normally a conscious choice. Having come
from 10+ years of Smalltalk, I find that things like dynamic generation
of code never even enter my mind when searching for a solution to a
problem. Personally, I fail to even see a need for such a thing. It
simply ties my mind in knots. I would be perfectly content if such
features did not exist. I wouldn't argue for their removal, but am
rather expressing the idea that my mind simply doesn't work that way.
Are there really problems that cannot be solved without dynamic code
generation?
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