[Willamin]

I read it as "42 is stored in age". The works particularly well for a long chain of methods that should end in storing the resulting value in a variable. I know this might seem to be the most conventional way that Ruby is written; it makes a single statement take 8 lines instead of 1, it transforms a value over the course of the statement instead of sending messages to tell an object to transform itself, and it ignores the concept of encapsulation by moving the interesting actions into the foreground rather than being hidden within an object.

Below is an _incredibly_ contrived example. Take note how the `=> final_value` syntax is useful. The alternative is to place a `final_value = ` at the _top_ of the statement. I'll admit: placing the assignment at the top of the method chain helps point out to the reader of the code that an assignment is happening. However, more useful I think is quickly recognizing the flow of data.

  "hello"
    .chars
    .size
    .*(10980643.4)
    .to_i
    .to_s(36)
    .upcase
    => final_value
  
  puts(final_value)
  # => WORLD

[keeganpoppen]

wait i feel like that's actually kind of gorgeous. syntax highlighting as it exists today might not be good enough to really make that form stand out, though...

[Freaky]

... and it's useful how? It obscures the assignment at the end of an arbitrarily long statement instead of giving the value a name right up front.

It feels a bit like a new method definition syntax that allows you to put the name after the `end` for... reasons.