From: Gregory Seidman <gsslist+ruby@...>
Date: 2006-03-23T07:29:05+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby for [...] programmers

On Thu, Mar 23, 2006 at 06:39:10AM +0900, Benjohn Barnes wrote:
[...]
} :) Well, that was the Pickaxe for me, but you've already said you  
} differ on that. ... The reason I say that, is I came from a c++  
} background (I like to think I'm reasonably capable at it too). While  
} I never felt that c++ gave an especially good way of describing  
} anything much (and I think OO is pretty limited, on the whole), it  
} was still very helpful to read the Pickaxe and find out just how much  
} I'd been missing out on.
[...]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. C++ has duck typing. (It's in
the templates.) It just happens at compile time instead of run time. This
has some significant advantages, not least of which is that the compiler
can do a lot of static analysis of your code, allowing it to catch errors
in code paths that runtime testing may not exercise.

C++ is good for a different class of problems than Ruby but if you don't
think C++ is especially good for any purpose, or you even think that C++ is
exclusively OO, then you didn't really know C++ that well and you didn't
use it to its full potential.

--Greg