Cutting Corners or Why Rails May Kill Ruby

http://solnic.eu/2015/06/06/cutting-corners-or-why-rails-may-kill-ruby.html

by Pdincau • 11 years ago

31 4 11 years ago

tel• 11 years ago

I recently learned that `forty_two` [0] is monkeypatched into Array of all places by Rails. More or less entirely as a meta joke.

[0] http://apidock.com/rails/Array/forty_two

capsule_toy• 11 years ago

While I agree with the sentiment, I don't believe it's necessarily cutting corners. Rather, it's by design. Rails values "elegance," and leans towards monolithism. Monkey patching is the means to those ends.

So even though I agree with you, I think it's going to be very difficult changing the philosophy of the Rails' ecosystem.

ssmoot• 11 years ago

What if you could require() your patch just where you needed it? You'd have the utility and elegance of the simple solution, without abusing the global namespace.

That's exactly what you'd do in Scala.

  implicit class HtmlHelpers(node: Node) {

    def id: String = node \ "@id" text

    def name: String = node \ "@name" text

    def cssClass: String = node \ "@class" text

    def href: String = node \ "@href" text
  }

And I haven't abused anything. Whenever I need it, even within another method, I can just import until.HtmlHelpers.

joshguthrie• 11 years ago

refines are coming soon into ruby-core (2.2.0 IIRC).

Cutting Corners or Why Rails May Kill Ruby

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