From: Florian Frank <flori@...>
Date: 2005-01-30T09:53:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Ten Things Every Java Programmer Should Know About Ruby

Navindra Umanee wrote:

>>I think you can, and I think LS was right when he said there was *no*
>>strong typing in Ruby.
>>    
>>
Well, it depends on what you mean with "strong typing". I don't think, 
that your examples have anything to do with strong/weak typing. That 
Ruby isn't statically type checked isn't anything new. Variables don't 
have a type in Ruby, so you can rebind a variable to as many objects as 
you wish like for example in Scheme.

If I use "strongly typed" I mean that the language is type safe: There 
can never be an operation, that is applied to the wrong type. If you try 
this in Ruby (or Java), an exception is raised (because of dynamic type 
checking). So Ruby is type safe, and how I understand the phrase, 
"strongly typed". If you don't agree, try to define "strong typing" in 
another meaningful way.

An example for a type unsafe or weakly typed language would be C, where 
bad things can happen because of it:

(flori@lambda:c 0)$ cat foo.c ; make foo; ./foo
main() { printf("%s\n", 666); }
Segmentation fault

-- 
Florian Frank