In the article, he says:
5.times { print "Odelay!" }
Or this:
exit unless "restaurant".include? "aura"
This makes sense if you used to be a Smalltalk (or perhaps Forth) programmer, and I know one who started with Python and has moved to Ruby. It also makes sense if you grew up Pennsylvania Dutch, where they say things like "Throw Papa down the stairs his hat," and "Throw the horse over the fence some hay."
Well that explains everything! You see, my father was Amish (until he was about 13 years old) and my mother’s parents were Amish. The Amish speak Pennsylvania Dutch (a distant dialect of German) in their homes and use High German in their church services. Often Amish children will enter first grade before they learn to speak english.
So I grew up in a community where Pennsylvania Dutch was often spoken, and influenced the way english was spoken. This "backwards" way of speaking sounds very familiar to me.
No wonder I am so attracted to the Ruby language.
I do find it humorous that Bruce is (mildly) poking fun at the Ruby (and Perl) technique of using if and unless as statement modifiers. Bruce makes it sound as if putting the if condition at the end of a statement (e.g. return if data.nil?) is somehow awkward english.
Now go reread the first two sentences of the paragraph that begins "This makes sense if …".
Interesting.
Actually, from the tone of the article (and some of the later comments), I get the feeling that Bruce respects that fact that a lot of people find Ruby attractive and productive.
Its just that it doesn’t click for him.
That’s OK. As my Amish relatives would say, "It takes all kinds, the world to make".
If you really want to increase your Ruby skills, I recommend that you spend a good part of the day listening to John Schmid sing a few Amish folk songs. My favorite is "Maydly vit du hayra?" where the Amish father queries his young daughter on the type of man she wants to marry. I actually remember the song "Reide, Reide, Geile" (Ride, Ride the Horse) sung in my house while growing up (usually as we were bouncing on Dad’s leg). Good Stuff!