From: "David G. Andersen" <dga@...>
Date: 2004-12-01T06:07:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Optional static typing (or, What can Ruby 2.0 borrow from Boo?)

On Wed, Dec 01, 2004 at 05:57:47AM +0900, Daniel Berger scribed:
> Hi all,
> 
> I was just looking at http://boo.codehaus.org/BooManifesto.pdf.  One
> thing I really kinda like is the optional static typing.  Wouldn't
> this allow potential compile time error checking and optimization with
> a virtual machine running things?  I imagine the syntax looking
> something like this:

http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?Rite

"Optional typing

 matz finds the current typing systems (StrongTyping? and types.rb)
 based on class/modules are too restrictive and hinder duck typing.
 He's looking for ideas to implement a system based on method
 signatures and integrate it in the VM core."

See also Matz's "How Ruby Sucks" presentation, and the slides
from this year's RubyConf 2004:

  http://www.zenspider.com/Languages/Ruby/RubyConf2004.html

Koichi Sasada's talk on "YARV: Yet Another RubyVM" was interesting
in this regard:

  http://www.atdot.net/yarv/RubyConf2004_YARV_pub.pdf

though it didn't explicitly talk about handling type information.

  -Dave

-- 
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