6 ms·

Perl was the first programming language I ever used, and i think 6 was being worked on even then. I've moved on to ruby as my goto, but my (limited) memories of

Perl was the first programming language I ever used, and i think 6 was being worked on even then. I've moved on to ruby as my goto, but my (limited) memories of perl are fond, and I'm happy to see its still moving forward.

mst 11y ago
Every time I try and write ruby I end up giving up because the OO is boilerplate heavy and restrictive compared to Moo/Moose. Basically "No method modifiers and I have to write my own constructors? Really?" always drives me away within a few hours.
- vidarh 11y ago
  Method modification is trivially done through "alias" and then just redefining the method in Ruby, if you re-open the same class. If you subclass, then "super" is sufficient. I'm curious what you actually mean here. As for writing your own constructors, you only need to do so if you actually need to initialize something, and since instance variables can be used without having initialized them in a constructor (they'll just default to nil), I'm curious what you mean here too.
  - mst 11y ago
    > Method modification is trivially done through "alias" and then just redefining the method in Ruby I don't know how to convert this into ruby then without needing to manually gensym a bunch of names: use Class::Method::Modifiers; sub foo { 2 } before foo => sub { warn "before foo 1" }; around foo => sub { my ($orig, $self) = (shift, shift); warn "around foo"; (1, $orig->$self(@_), 3); }; before foo => sub { warn "before foo 2" }; > As for writing your own constructors, you only need to do so if you actually need to initialize something Which is required if you're going to use value objects as much as possible rather than spraying mutable state everywhere.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > I don't know how to convert this into ruby then without needing to manually gensym a bunch of names Sounds like you want something like: https://github.com/nicknovitski/modifiers https://github.com/nicknovitski/modifiers > Which is required if you're going to use value objects as much as possible rather than spraying mutable state everywhere. Using Ruby's Struct class for this often avoids needing explicit constructors.
      - mst 11y ago
        Except that package doesn't provide before/after/around. What I really want is CLOS. But the closest in perl/python/ruby/javascript is Moose/Moo. There's also, btw, a moosex gem where some rubyists are trying to port the perl stuff - but Moose/Moo are pervasive in modern OO perl whereas most existing ruby code is done the ugly, boilerplate-y way.
    - steveklabnik 11y ago
      You can do this. I tried to draw up a quick gist, but I am late, and I've been writing too much Rust... The basic idea is this: module Mst def self.included(base) # define a method on base using define_method named :before, which takes an # argument and a block # in that method, you grab the method with that name, using .method() # you then define a new method, named method, which calls the block and # then calls the original method end end class Foo include Mst def test puts "test" end before :test do puts "before" end end Module named after you. You can see how the logic only changes a bit for after and around. You could then wrap this up as a library, and all you'd need to do is the include. http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/Callbacks/Filters.html http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/Callbacks/F... has an example, I think.
      - mst 11y ago
        That's really cute. I hope, however, that you can understand from the POV of somebody who keeps being driven off ruby by ruby being too much work, that "you could make it less work by first porting all the perl5 libraries that make perl5 OO more pleasant" isn't really a convincing solution :)
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
deskamess 11y ago
It was not my first language but the memories are fond. It just sat so well on my head by making things you thought of possible with little resistance. Impedance mismatch was minimized. Hard to explain. Became a master text wrangling language by making regex a first class citizen.

mst 11y ago

Every time I try and write ruby I end up giving up because the OO is boilerplate heavy and restrictive compared to Moo/Moose. Basically "No method modifiers and I have to write my own constructors? Really?" always drives me away within a few hours.

vidarh 11y ago
Method modification is trivially done through "alias" and then just redefining the method in Ruby, if you re-open the same class. If you subclass, then "super" is sufficient. I'm curious what you actually mean here. As for writing your own constructors, you only need to do so if you actually need to initialize something, and since instance variables can be used without having initialized them in a constructor (they'll just default to nil), I'm curious what you mean here too.
- mst 11y ago
  > Method modification is trivially done through "alias" and then just redefining the method in Ruby I don't know how to convert this into ruby then without needing to manually gensym a bunch of names: use Class::Method::Modifiers; sub foo { 2 } before foo => sub { warn "before foo 1" }; around foo => sub { my ($orig, $self) = (shift, shift); warn "around foo"; (1, $orig->$self(@_), 3); }; before foo => sub { warn "before foo 2" }; > As for writing your own constructors, you only need to do so if you actually need to initialize something Which is required if you're going to use value objects as much as possible rather than spraying mutable state everywhere.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > I don't know how to convert this into ruby then without needing to manually gensym a bunch of names Sounds like you want something like: https://github.com/nicknovitski/modifiers https://github.com/nicknovitski/modifiers > Which is required if you're going to use value objects as much as possible rather than spraying mutable state everywhere. Using Ruby's Struct class for this often avoids needing explicit constructors.
    - mst 11y ago
      Except that package doesn't provide before/after/around. What I really want is CLOS. But the closest in perl/python/ruby/javascript is Moose/Moo. There's also, btw, a moosex gem where some rubyists are trying to port the perl stuff - but Moose/Moo are pervasive in modern OO perl whereas most existing ruby code is done the ugly, boilerplate-y way.
  - steveklabnik 11y ago
    You can do this. I tried to draw up a quick gist, but I am late, and I've been writing too much Rust... The basic idea is this: module Mst def self.included(base) # define a method on base using define_method named :before, which takes an # argument and a block # in that method, you grab the method with that name, using .method() # you then define a new method, named method, which calls the block and # then calls the original method end end class Foo include Mst def test puts "test" end before :test do puts "before" end end Module named after you. You can see how the logic only changes a bit for after and around. You could then wrap this up as a library, and all you'd need to do is the include. http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/Callbacks/Filters.html http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/Callbacks/F... has an example, I think.
    - mst 11y ago
      That's really cute. I hope, however, that you can understand from the POV of somebody who keeps being driven off ruby by ruby being too much work, that "you could make it less work by first porting all the perl5 libraries that make perl5 OO more pleasant" isn't really a convincing solution :)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

deskamess 11y ago

It was not my first language but the memories are fond. It just sat so well on my head by making things you thought of possible with little resistance. Impedance mismatch was minimized. Hard to explain. Became a master text wrangling language by making regex a first class citizen.