"Useless syntax sugar": Numbered block parameters in Ruby
"Useless syntax sugar": Numbered block parameters in Ruby
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Is ruby the new Perl?
That deserves an "always has been" meme... But IMO, Ruby outperled Perl since the beginning.
Perl doesn't let you redefine the syntax so that you can write the same program multiple ways. All it does is to encourage multiple programs to have the same meaning.
I never looked at Ruby, but that doesn't seem like it would be great for readability (although maybe productivity).
People mostly refrain from using it.
Much like people used to create an idiom in Perl and stick to it.
It's designed to be as readable as english.
Take that as you will
And lets you easily write metal languages due to the way you can pass around blocks. Think configuration as code type stuff.
Ruby cribbed a whole lot of syntax from Perl from the very beginning. Most of the rest comes from Smalltalk, but Ruby got it's multitude of two character "$" variables from Perl, it's autosplit mode (-a -n -p switches, letting Ruby, like Perl "emulate Awk"), it's regexp match captures going into $1, $2 etc. from Perl.