I think assembler syntax is perfect.

Wow, as they say, there is first time for everything.

I’ve never heard anyone praise assembler syntax as being perfect. I must say I’m intrigued now.

Maybe you could explain how would an equivalent of Rails syntax, something like:

validates_presence_of :name

translate into the assembler syntax? If that syntax is indeed perfect, as you claim, it should then render something even more expressive and intuitivelly easier to grasp than validates_presence_of (which, for me at least, is as close as I’ve seen a programming language ever come to perfection).

… syntax that does not require verbosity is ideal.

Assembler syntax does not require verbosity. Still, I, for one, wouldn’t call that syntax ideal. Far from it! I think assembler non-verbose syntax sucks.

And verbosity makes code easier to read. I don’t have to know anything to understand the code. Everything I need to know is there in front of me.

This is wrong. To code is to know. I hope he doesn’t really plan to get anywhere not knowing anything. No matter what level of understanding you are shooting for by reading you should always read to understand.

Also, the code will ideally speak for itself. Comments are one thing, but syntax that does not require verbosity is ideal.

The real problem there sits at a higher level. It is the person that doesn’t stop to think about what they’re doing and how it could possibly be better.

If :hasandbelongstomany were changed to :modelhasmanyotherentitiesandbelongstomanyotherentities it would be more verbose and even easier to understand to someone new to the code but it wouldn’t be any more specific.

I’m not saying being verbose is bad in entirety, being just verbose enough is the moving target I want to aim at. And I’m more railing against the sort of verbosity in Java. I still don’t understand having to create a class to run a program.