From: Bob Hutchison <hutch@...>
Date: 2006-08-13T21:56:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Tim Bray (Sun Microsystems) on Ruby

Hi,

On Aug 13, 2006, at 5:43 AM, Xavier Noria wrote:

> On Aug 13, 2006, at 10:35 AM, zoat wrote:
>
>> The Director of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems jumps  
>> directly to
>> the conclusion about Ruby. "For people like me, who are proficient in
>> Perl and Java, Ruby is remarkably, perhaps irresistibly, attractive."
>> http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/07/24/Ruby
>
> Just for the archives, at the end of the post it reads:
>
> "Finally, a minor, almost a footnote, issue. I miss polymorphism.  
> In particular, I miss polymorphic constructors."
>
> but Ruby does have polymorphism. I guess he means "method  
> overloading" (which can be partially mimicked with default arguments).

I'm pretty sure he means 'ad hoc polymorphism' which is, within half  
the width of a hair, the same as 'overloading'... though, it does say  
something about his world view. This is one of the only places where  
types/classes are used in CLOS, at least when I write in CLOS. Though  
I love working in Ruby and I understand why Ruby doesn't support it,  
I too miss this on occasion.

Cheers,
Bob

>
> -- fxn
>
>

----
Bob Hutchison                  -- blogs at <http://www.recursive.ca/ 
hutch/>
Recursive Design Inc.          -- <http://www.recursive.ca/>
Raconteur                      -- <http://www.raconteur.info/>
xampl for Ruby                 -- <http://rubyforge.org/projects/xampl/>