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DHH never fails to impress. As usual, he cuts to the core of his beliefs, and delivers sound argument for them. Program with Ruby long enough and it really sta

DHH never fails to impress. As usual, he cuts to the core of his beliefs, and delivers sound argument for them. Program with Ruby long enough and it really starts to feel like a religious experience. You feel like you can literally do anything. Things you can't do with it just don't seem important anymore. Rails just takes Ruby and puts it on steroids.

SimbaOnSteroids 10y ago
Puts it on steroids you say? Seems I'm in good company. Bad joke aside, and I may be a naïve newbie, but what is stopping someone from writing tons of implicit code during their most productive work hours and when they're tired go back and make comments that make the code more explicit. Seems that this would get the best of both worlds in that you'd be able to be hyper productive when you've got the mental resources and then taking that extra time to make sure whoever stumbles upon your code later doesn't have to deal with a huge learning curve.
- factotum 10y ago
  The problem with comments is that they are too often lies. As the code changes, the comments may not necessarily be updated, and in my experience, they often aren't. Automated documentation and validation are superior to static comments in general. Using a compiled language can help with some of this, and automated tests even more.
  - SimbaOnSteroids 10y ago
    True, I know the JetBrains IDEs have automated refactoring, and I'm sure other IDEs do this as well, I'm not sure how much of additional overhead it would be to implement an auto comment feature/plugin that handles the job of generating/maintaining comments like #Person refers to columnn people and other things a more explicit language would simply state. Seems like something that could be fairly easily automated.
uptownJimmy 10y ago
I find DHH terribly unconvincing. But your point about religion seems appropriate, where Rails is concerned...

SimbaOnSteroids 10y ago

Puts it on steroids you say? Seems I'm in good company. Bad joke aside, and I may be a naïve newbie, but what is stopping someone from writing tons of implicit code during their most productive work hours and when they're tired go back and make comments that make the code more explicit. Seems that this would get the best of both worlds in that you'd be able to be hyper productive when you've got the mental resources and then taking that extra time to make sure whoever stumbles upon your code later doesn't have to deal with a huge learning curve.

factotum 10y ago
The problem with comments is that they are too often lies. As the code changes, the comments may not necessarily be updated, and in my experience, they often aren't. Automated documentation and validation are superior to static comments in general. Using a compiled language can help with some of this, and automated tests even more.
- SimbaOnSteroids 10y ago
  True, I know the JetBrains IDEs have automated refactoring, and I'm sure other IDEs do this as well, I'm not sure how much of additional overhead it would be to implement an auto comment feature/plugin that handles the job of generating/maintaining comments like #Person refers to columnn people and other things a more explicit language would simply state. Seems like something that could be fairly easily automated.

uptownJimmy 10y ago

I find DHH terribly unconvincing. But your point about religion seems appropriate, where Rails is concerned...