use Perl

• Calm down dear, it's only programming (Score:1)

  by pdcawley (485)

  I've never quite understood the RSpec crowd's obsession with renaming things, but as a library RSpec kicks the default ruby Test::Unit's arse so comprehensively otherwise.
  
  Nor do I understand the style that has them use do ... end style blocks to wrap code that, at it's best looks declarative. It's not impossible to write:
  
  
describe SomeClass {
    it "should be instantiable" {
        SomeClass.new.should_not be_nil
    }
}

  
  which seems a good deal cleaner. Many ruby progr
  • Or to put it another way (Score:1)

    by pdcawley (485)

    I really, really, really hate that extraneous fscking do. If only the language would let me declare things so I could write:
    
    
describe Something
    it "should do stuff"
        do_stuff_with_it
    end
end

    
    I'd be a good deal happier. Yes, I could write a source filter type thing in the runner, but I don't want the pain of having to parse the whole of the rest of bloody ruby just to get rid of that stupid do
    
    But, hey, ruby pays my mortgage and I'll swap the aesthetic pain
    • Re: (Score:1)

      by tsee (4409)

      So that means you'll be back to Perl 5 if 5.12 has named parameters to subs and/or methods? ;)
      • Re: (Score:1)

        by pdcawley (485)

        Probably not. See the comment about the mortgage.
        
        I'm holding out for malleable syntax, real objects, proper garbage collection and decent function/method prototypes.
        
        And a fanatical devotion to the Pope.
        
        It's more likely to be things like DateTime that lure me back - Ruby's date handling is woeful.
        • Re:Or to put it another way (Score:2)

          by djberg96 (2603) on 2008.02.07 14:58 (#60950) Journal

          Care to be more specific about Ruby's date handling issues?

          Reply to This

          Parent

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by pdcawley (485)

            Go and read the documentation for the DateTime suite of modules. Now point me to anything as comprehensive and well thought out on rubyforge. At least Ruby on Rails is starting to address some of the problems in its earlier implementations of things like 1.month.from_now by inventing/rediscovering the Duration class.
            
            http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2003/03/13/datetime.html [perl.com] is a good read too, in which Dave Rolsky explains the issues with the ad hoc nature of most Perl calendrical modules before the DateTime better