From: Nicholas Van Weerdenburg <vanweerd@...>
Date: 2005-01-26T01:05:16+09:00
Subject: Re: "Duck Typing" or "No need for abstract classes"

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 20:54:51 +0900, Lothar Scholz
<mailinglists@scriptolutions.com> wrote:
> Hello Curt,
> 
> CS> On Tue, 25 Jan 2005, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
> 
> CS> Of course, creating something like this is much harder in a language
> CS> like Ruby where objects are ever-changing and ever-malliable. But even
> CS> for Ruby it should be possible to do it at least to some extent, falling
> CS> back to exceptions at runtime if you're doing something tricky (such as
> CS> adding and removing singleton methods on an object on the fly).
> 
> 100% ACK.
> As a toolwriter i often get requests: I want a good working
> refactoring browsers, where are the code tooltips,
> can't you integrate a ruby lint etc.
> 
> These tools all need a type inference engine and this is a huge task.
> If someone wants to start with it perfect. I really want to see the
> heuristics that are used. And i really hope that ruby gets some common
> agreements how to write type assertions very soon.
> 
> I recently read an article on www.smalltalk.org about the python
> typing extension. It's bad to see that so many people don't understand
> that this technique can be optional and some hints are much better then none. We
> don't need to be able to specify everything, but in most cases it's
> very easy and very helpful to do so.
> 
> --
>  Best regards,                        emailto: scholz at scriptolutions dot com
>  Lothar Scholz                        http://www.ruby-ide.com
>  CTO Scriptolutions                   Ruby, PHP, Python IDE 's
> 
> 

Several interesting articles on http://www.smalltalk.org at the moment-

"The Futility of Adding Types to a Dynamic Language"
and
"Extending Encapsulation For Smalltalk"

Are interesting looks into typing and encapsulation in dynamically
typed systems.

It was also amusing that the author of the first added a side-bar
essentially apologizing for disagreeing with Guido Van Rossum.

"Please note that it is my opinion and view that adding types to
Python are a mistake and that this should not be seen as an ad hominen
personal attack upon Guido van Rossum, as that is not intended
(...rest clipped...)"

http://www.smalltalk.org is a nice looking site as well.

Nick
-- 
Nicholas Van Weerdenburg