From: Ryan Davis <ryand-ruby@...>
Date: 2010-09-30T05:43:05+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:32642] Re: Proposal for Optional Static Typing for Ruby


On Sep 29, 2010, at 12:40 , Charles Oliver Nutter wrote:

> This is the crux of the problem. Ruby is dynamic to a great enough
> extent that global optimization is not always possible (or at least
> not feasible) since anything, anywhere in the system can change. Not
> only can new types be introduced, but existing types can be modified,
> and even individual objects only give soft guarantees about what type
> they are (singletonizing an object is almost a limited "become" from
> Smalltalk, and defeats most dynamic optimizations completely).

This problem was tackled by Dave Ungar ages ago and is the reason why your beloved java is finally fast. It wasn't the types that made java fast. Java had that from the beginning and it was doggedly slow. It was the hotspot technology that made it fast.

I had a wonderfully enlightening talk with him 2 OOPSLAs ago that opened my eyes to a lot of possibilities for rubinius. You should have talked to him when he worked "down the hall" from you.