What's better about Ruby than Python?

[John Roth]

"Heiko Wundram" <heikowu at ceosg.de> wrote in message
news:mailman.1061271511.20407.python-list at python.org...
> On Mon, 2003-08-18 at 19:40, John Roth wrote:
> > This is why Ruby's solution is superior: "self" is a reserved word,
> > and so is the special character shortcut. There is no question as
> > to what is meant. It eliminates essentially futile arguements in the
> > same way that Python's indentation eliminates arguements about
> > the proper placement of braces.
>
> I think you're not getting the main point in a difference between Ruby
> and Python here, and why it makes (IMHO) no sense to have a default self
> in a function:
>
> class X:
> def test(*args):
> print args
>
> X.test() # 1
> x = X()
> x.test() # 2
> X.test(x) # 3
>
> Run this, and for the first call you will get an empty tuple, while for
> the second call, you will get a tuple with the first parameter set to a
> class instance of X, and for the third call the same as for the second
> call. Remember about method binding (method/function difference), and
> the like.
>
> I want to have class-functions which can be callable either as a
> function of the class (doing something on input-data), or work directly
> on the instance they are associated with. If you have a predeclared
> self, only calls 2 and 3 would work, if the self parameter is just
> another parameter for the function, I can miraculously call the function
> just like it is (see call 1).
>
> I find it reasonable enough to have a feature like this to not complain
> about having to specify self as the first parameter, always.

If every function/method has access to an instance/class whatever,
then there is clearly no reason to waste keystrokes specifying it on
the function/method header. I would think this would be obvious.

John Roth
>
> Heiko.
>
>