There are two kinds of programming languages that are unsurprising to the programmer. The first kind has users that say, "Everything about this language is unsurprising." The second has users that say, "Nothing about this language surprises me any more." --after a conversation with Pete Forde
You probably know that Ruby supports writing parameter-less blocks using begin and end:
fu = begin
a = 1
b = 2
c = 3
a + b + c
end
# => 6
You may also know that you can use parentheses with multiple lines:
fu = ( a = 1
b = 2
c = 3
a + b + c )
# => 6
I didn't know that! As usual, semi-colons work as separators:
fu = ( a = 1
b = 2; c = 3
a + b + c )
# => 6
The sharp-eyed amongst you may have noticed that some of these statements could be combined with Ruby's destructuring assignment:
fu = ( a, b, c = 1, 2, 3
a + b + c )
# => 6
But that's a different language feature. Okay, that's enough lingua obscura for today.
Recent work:
- CoffeeScript Ristretto, Kestrels, Quirky Birds, and Hopeless Egocentricity and my other books.
- Cafe au Life, a CoffeeScript implementation of Bill Gosper's HashLife written in the Williams Style.
- Katy, a library for writing fluent CoffeeScript and JavaScript using combinators.
- Method Combinators, a CoffeeScript/JavaScript library for writing method decorators, simply and easily.