

The 28 Bytes of Ruby Joy - telemachos
http://rbjl.net/26-the-28-bytes-of-ruby-joy

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wgj
Raganwald does a nice job explaining the pitfalls (and to the OP's credit this
was also linked from the original post.)

[http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2009-02-0...](http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2009-02-02/hopeless_egocentricity.md)

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spooneybarger
so this is basically a simplified version of the null object pattern with all
its problems.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Object_pattern>

it is worse than the null object pattern though as you have done it to your
entire application. a better approach would be to determine when you have a
hash that you want this behaviour from and implement a class for that specific
behaviour rather than shotgunning it into everything.

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telemachos
My initial reaction is that this is a bad idea. I would rather fail quickly
than pass the nil along.

But I'm curious what others think.

