Imagine I am new to Ruby. I go looking to figure out if a file exists. Or I get a list of available methods from the file object. Now I have to research both `exist?` and `exists?` to figure out if I should be choosing one or the other.

Now multiply that by.... every past history of every API and it makes adopting something really difficult as a newcomer.

aka Common Lisp.

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cortesoft 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

It doesn’t matter which one you do, the methods are literally identical other than the extra s. You can’t pick the wrong one.

This sort of choice is very common in Ruby, you can have different style choices for the same functionality. You can have blocks made with {} or do and end. You can do conditionals in the form of “a if b” or “if b then a”. You can call methods with or without parentheses.

These are all Ruby style choices, and we already have a way to enforce a particular style for a particular project with formatters like rubocop.

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jcalvinowens 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm not defending the Ruby decision, I literally said I wouldn't have done it. It reminds me of the disttools removal from python, which was also not something I'd have done nearly so aggressively if it were up to me. Multiple distros have patched it back in.

But it wasn't up to me. It's not my project. I'm using somebody else's project, and at the end of the day it's their decision, because they own it. Unless it's impossible to work around, I feel like I have to either respect that, or switch to an alternative.

You're free to maintain a patch on top of Ruby to add the alias and run that on your machines, btw. It would probably be very simple, although certainly not as simple as aforementioned sed command...

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kelipso a day ago | parent | next [-]

> You're free to maintain a patch on top of Ruby to add the alias and run that on your machines, btw.

Comments like this are honestly just asshole-ish.

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jcalvinowens a day ago | parent [-]

Why? It's true. It's not even really that hard. My point is nobody is forcing them to accept it.

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kelipso a day ago | parent [-]

Because Ruby is nothing without the community around it. If they wanted to make Ruby and don’t care about the people using it, they should go private, shut down the project, or have someone else take over.

It’s wrong to shut down discussion like this with comments like “it’s their code”, “make your own fork”, etc. because Ruby is supposed to be part of the open source community, which implies collaboration, give and take, discussion of pros and cons, etc.

What you are doing is ignoring this major aspect of a programming language and taking this weird anti social stance on it.

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jcalvinowens a day ago | parent [-]

I'm not shutting down any discussion, I'm simply stating my opinion. You're free to disagree.

I didn't say to fork it. Do you really not appreciate the difference between rebasing a trivial patch forever, and maintaining a wholesale fork forever?

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kelipso a day ago | parent [-]

Crowing on saying “it’s not your code, they can do what they want” is an attempt to do that.

Fork, patch, maintaining your private whatever, that’s not the point, and is a digression.

	▲	jcalvinowens a day ago \| parent [-]
		It's a perfectly valid point, you just disagree. I'm not the one shutting down discussion here.

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cortesoft 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Of course it is their decision, and they don’t OWE me an explanation.

But this is a discussion forum, and I am asking for people who agree with the decision to explain why they agree. Again, they don’t have to answer me if they don’t want to. I am just saying, “if anyone knows an argument for this type of change, I would love to hear it”

Saying they don’t have to explain their reasoning is true but not really relevant to our conversation. I am not asking THEM, I am asking HN readers.