From: Aredridel <aredridel@...>
Date: 2004-05-18T08:29:10+09:00
Subject: Re: How to duck type? - the psychology of static typing in Ruby

> This is rather risky; you're assuming less than what the documentation 
> says, and hoping that nobody else assumes any more than you do. That's 
> just asking for someone to come along and add something that does use 
> one of those methods, and suddenly things come crashing down around you. 

Nah, it crashes down on /them/.  Garbage in, garbage out.

Imagine how useful the unix grep command would be if it assumed lines
were 80 characters, and errored if you passed it otherwise. 

Static vs dynamic typing is a similar design choice: Let the user put in
whatver they want, and if they get results they don't like, let them
adjust.

Doesn't always apply -- you still validate things where appropriate, but
static typing seems an arbitrary limit to me, not application-specfic
where it's justified.