From: Edwin Eyan Moragas <haaktu@...>
Date: 2004-11-12T02:48:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Thinking About Java Interfaces In Ruby

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 01:54:35 +0900, James Britt
<jamesunderbarb@neurogami.com> wrote:
> > Strange - that's not my experience.
> 
> Nor mine.  But there are some number of people who believe this to be true.

nor mine. so far.

> Put another way, some find duck typing "a huge source of errors", others
> do not.  I do not think anyone is lying, so what accounts for the
> difference?  Class/method design? Unit testing? LOC?

i think the source of "huge errors" would be in the overall
programming experience.
when i was young and full of hope, coding in c and perl was such a
pain primarily because
i didn't know how to write tests then.

shifting from php/perl to java when i grew a bit older in the code
gave me a really good
feeling because my IDE can check syntax even without running things i wrote.

then i as grew even older in the code, java just couldn't hack it
anymore and i found
ruby. but this time, i have learned how to write tests and i never felt an ounce
of unease just because i can't check syntax while writing.

so there. IMHO, duck typing is good because i don't have to go thru hoops just
to get my new class accepted. but the insurance comes from good tests.
another great
benefit is the lesser number of lines of code to do equivalent tasks.

ask paul graham might say "succinctness is power". you might want to
read his thoughts on java too. :-)

now back to my day job...

-- 
i'm not flying. i'm falling... in style.