From: ara.t.howard@...
Date: 2006-10-17T00:29:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Non-declared variables

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006, Gavin Kistner wrote:

> From: Avatar [mailto:acampbellb@hotmail.com]
>> Are there real tangible benefits that non-declared, dynamically typed
>> (at binding time) variables provide? Or do dynamic variables simply
>> create less compile time errors and more (harder to catch) runtime
>> errors?
>
> Every language feature that reduces how much typing I have to do is a
> tangible benefit to me. It eases stress on my body machine, and speeds
> the delivery of my code.
>
> The only downside I can think of is that typos may not be caught for
> instance/class variables as readily:
>
> class Foo
>  def bar
>    @somethingDelicious = 12
>  end
>  def whee
>    print( @sonethingDeIicious )
>  end
> end
>
> If you personally find that you are having trouble in this arena, I
> suspect that it wouldn't be hard to write a code analyzer that alerted
> on potential misspellings. I've personally not needed it.

for those of you using vim, the completion feature virtually eliminates this
kind of bug.  for instance, i can type @som, then hit 'ctrl-n', and
@somethingDelicious simply appears.  this is a huge bug stopper for me,
because i reely cant spel.

fyi.

-a
-- 
my religion is very simple.  my religion is kindness. -- the dalai lama