From: Paul Prescod <paulp@...>
Date: 2001-08-12T08:43:41+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:19555] Re: order and freedom in Ruby (was: Re: Re: the  way class variables work)

Martin Weber wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> Yes, that's fine. But you'd get a warning for an at least implicit cast when
> trying to call it with int, float.

Okay, change all declarations to float. It doesn't make any difference.
The point is that division by zero can only be prevented by forethought,
testing and perhaps defensive coding. That's the same in C++, Ruby,
Lisp, Python or whatever. Therefore the removal of type declarations
does not change the basic nature of software development
code->test->code->test. All it does is remove the "build" step from the
loop.

>..
> I mean, in some cases static types do have some neat pros (okay might be I
> just feel that, been using tcl and perl for some time, as well as c/++)

There is no doubt that there are advantages to static type checking. But
the message I responded to seemed to indicate that there are certain
projects that are ONLY achievable with static type checking. I simply do
not believe that is so.
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