I think that Wall misunderstands the policy of least surprise and I even think Matz might agree with the principle of the quoted statement (although he probably

I think that Wall misunderstands the policy of least surprise and I even think Matz might agree with the principle of the quoted statement (although he probably wouldn't agree with the overall point Wall is making). From an interview: "I wanted to minimize my frustration during programming, so I want to minimize my effort in programming. That was my primary goal in designing Ruby. I want to have fun in programming myself. After releasing Ruby and many people around the world got to know Ruby, they said they feel the way I feel. They came up with the phrase the principle of least surprise. But actually, it's often misunderstood. ... Everyone has an individual background. Someone may come from Python, someone else may come from Perl, and they may be surprised by different aspects of the language. Then they come up to me and say, "I was surprised by this feature of the language, so therefore Ruby violates the principle of least surprise." Wait. Wait. The principle of least surprise is not for you only. The principle of least surprise means principle of least my surprise. And it means the principle of least surprise after you learn Ruby very well. For example, I was a C++ programmer before I started designing Ruby. I programmed in C++ exclusively for two or three years. And after two years of C++ programming, it still surprised me." http://www.artima.com/intv/ruby4.html http://www.artima.com/intv/ruby4.html