From: Dumaiu <Dymaio@...>
Date: 2006-07-26T23:50:16+09:00
Subject: Re: I'll have the duck!

ara.t.howard@noaa.gov wrote:
>
> i was thinking about this on my ride home and recalled a term used in damian
> conway's object oriented perl book (a fastastic book on oo programming btw.)
> and a term he used way back then : 'interface polymorphism.'  the more i
> thought about it the more i like the term better than 'duck typing' because
> it's closer in spirit to the idea of something being an acceptable object
> merely by implimenting (via method_missing or whatever) a certain set of
> behvaiours.
>

	Holy cow; the whole thread was worth it just for this.  This is on
target: in ruby-talk 03608 matz in fact mentions as an illustration of
'implementation polymorphism' the Enumerable module, because the use of
each() is the only requirement defined for compatibility.  I will posit
as a distinction that 'duck typing,' as we call it, is a description of
an innate behavior of the language, while 'implementation inheritance'
would be D. Conway's name for the general consequence of building
projects with this kind of model in mind.