The Sapphire Language: getting and setting instance variables
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There are 41 keywords in Ruby. Also there are about 6 (more depending on how you count them) or so ’psuedo-keywords’ like private, public, attr_read, etc. which are keywords in all but name. While you CAN override them, I’ve never seen any real code do so. But there’s an awful lot of real code out there :)
Sapphire currently has 35 keywords (including get/set) so we have a good bit less than Ruby.
In my view, if something behaves like a keyword, it should be a keyword. No ands, ifs or buts. I suspect that the reason Matz didn’t put private, etc, in as keywords is that the Ruby yacc grammar is a real pig to debug and it was easier to define them as methods. The effect is the same in the end.
My objection to C# keywords is a) there are way too many and b) I really, really dislike having to put upto 5 keywords in front of a method name. Get/set I have no problem with as the syntax is at least clear. Also, accessors are methods - so why not make this fact explicit and obvious?
Dermot