[ruby-core:32662] Re: Proposal for Optional Static Typing for Ruby

Hi Ellie

What do you mean by runtime mutable? Do you mean creating new classes or methods at runtime? Do you mean creating a new class at runtime? Do you mean adding a method to an existing class at runtime? Swapping the implementation of two methods? Loading new code at any point during runtime? All of those are things that Objective-C can do. The only thing you can't do is to interpret a string containing Obj-C as code, as while Obj-C is heavily runtime based, it is still a pre-compiled language (that said it is theoretically possibly in the future for such JIT compilation to occur).

Yet despite being very dynamic, it also gives the ability for type information to be added prior to compilation, so tools can use it to help aid developers.

Thanks

Martin

On 30 Sep 2010, at 10:48PM, Eleanor McHugh wrote:

> Hi Martin,
> 
> Objective-C is a fundamentally different beast to Ruby: yes it's dynamically typed, but it's not runtime mutable in the way that Ruby, Lisp and Forth are. That's not to say you can't battle against the flow of either language - after all, once you have function and void pointers you can play tricks with assembler injection and type reinterpretation to do pretty much anything you fancy, and that's certainly an option with Objective-C thanks to its C heritage and Ruby thanks to the DL or FFI extensions.
> 
> The question is whether trying to fit code in either language to the design criteria of the other is such a great idea - let alone insisting that either conform to the particular prejudices of a given style of development tool.
> 
> 
> Ellie
> 
> Eleanor McHugh
> Games With Brains
> http://feyeleanor.tel
> ----
> raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason
> 
> 
>