Coming soon to a cell phone near you...

Just a reminder: In a month, cell phone numbers are being released to
telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sale calls.
YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS
To prevent this, call the following number from your cell phone:
888/382-1222. It is the National DO NOT CALL list. It will only take a
minute of your time. It blocks your number for five (5) years.

You can also use the following web link:

https://www.donotcall.gov/default.aspx

The opposite of in...

Quick, what's the opposite of login?

The answer, of course, is logout.

And the opposite of logon?

Logoff!

So why do some systems want you to login, then logoff; while others prefer that you logon and logout?

I must be developing another pet peeve.

Why I worry about Ruby

In the FAQ on the official Ruby site, Matz (author of Ruby) is quoted as saying:

Well, Ruby was born on February 24 1993. I was talking with my colleague about the possibility of an object-oriented scripting language. I knew Perl (Perl4, not Perl5), but I didn’t like it really, because it had smell of toy language (it still has). The object-oriented scripting language seemed very promising.

I knew Python then. But I didn’t like it, because I didn’t think it was a true object-oriented language—OO features appeared to be add-on to the language. As a language manic and OO fan for 15 years, I really wanted a genuine object-oriented, easy-to-use scripting language. I looked for, but couldn’t find one.

Let's see: In 1993 he had been an OO fan for fifteen years. He must have been using Simula in 1978. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that one, but...

Python is not object-oriented enough? OO features tacked on?

Apparently Matz doesn't quite get it. In Python *everything* is an object Witness the following interactive session:

>>> type(1)
<type 'int'>
>>> dir(1)

['__abs__', '__add__', '__and__', '__class__', '__cmp__', '__coerce__', '__delattr__', '__div__', '__divmod__', '__doc__', '__float__', '__floordiv__', '__getattribute__', '__getnewargs__', '__hash__', '__hex__', '__init__', '__int__', '__invert__', '__long__', '__lshift__', '__mod__', '__mul__', '__neg__', '__new__', '__nonzero__', '__oct__', '__or__', '__pos__', '__pow__', '__radd__', '__rand__', '__rdiv__', '__rdivmod__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__rfloordiv__', '__rlshift__', '__rmod__', '__rmul__', '__ror__', '__rpow__', '__rrshift__', '__rshift__', '__rsub__', '__rtruediv__', '__rxor__', '__setattr__', '__str__', '__sub__', '__truediv__', '__xor__']

As you can see an integer, like all the other native data types, is an object with a value, a type, methods -- the whole shebag.

Not only that, but!

>>> def spam():
... """This is the spam function"""
... print "Peanut butter and Spam sandwich"
...
>>> spam()
Peanut butter and Spam sandwich
>>> type(spam)
<type function >
>>> dir(spam)
['__call__', '__class__', '__delattr__', '__dict__', '__doc__', '__get__',
'__getattribute__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__module__', '__name__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__',
'__repr__', '__setattr__', '__str__', 'func_closure', 'func_code', 'func_defaults', 'func_dict', 'func_doc',
'func_globals', 'func_name']

A function is an object. It can be manipulated just like any other object in Python. It just happens to support the __call__ method. Yes, of course you can create your own class of object that supports the __call__ method and use it anywhere a "normal" function is expected.

Other types objects in Python include modules (in Java they're called packages); chunks of compiled code (that's the func_code property of the method above); "None"; "NotImplemented"; and "Ellipsis"; and more, all of which are available to be manipulated by the programmer as objects (if your into that kind of thing), or to just quietly do their job if you'd rather concentrate on the important stuff.

Of course, Python supports user defined classes from which instances (i.e. objects) can be created. Like the rest of Python, class defintions are syntactically and conceptually clean. And yes, the class itself is just as much an object as its instantiations are.

About the only OO feature I can think of that Python doesn't support is function overloading -- it's kind of hard to do in a dynamically typed language (grin).

Back in '93 Python was still a bit young (it was originally released in '91) but even then it was obvious that "Guido knows Objects."

I guess Matz was mislead because Python's OO nature is not constantly in-your-face. You can code in Python without thinking about objects (unless, of course, you want to). Instead you get to think about the problem you're trying to solve. Hello world in Python is:

print "Hello, World!"

The objects are there doing their job, so you don't have to worry about them.

Maybe Matz did a better job of designing Ruby than he did of understanding Python.