From: "Rule.rule" <rule.rule.rule@...>
Date: 2008-02-22T11:25:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby type-safe? Ruby strongly/weakly typed? Ruby pitfalls?

On Feb 22, 2:08 am, Bill Kelly <bi...@cts.com> wrote:
> If you have a really long background in OOP, you probably started
> with Smalltalk right?  (Since its inventor, Alan Kay, coined the
> term Object Oriented.)

Hi Bill,

No, smalltalk is one language I never used, I'm afraid.
My first experience with OOP was a dialect called Pascal-Plus in the
early 80'ies, then C++, Delphi, Java...

> <grin>
>
> Anyway -Rubyhas strong/dynamic typing

Dynamic, sure.
But re strongly, yes, I have seen this claim in several places
(including from Matz).
As I pointed out on wiki, though, it seems to depend on what
definition one refers to.
It seems to me, Matz is using Defs #3 and/or #6 in the list I gave
there:
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_%28programming_language%29

But Ruby immediately clashes with my own "intuitive concept" of
"strongly typed",
when you can do things like:
  x = 2; x = "a"
without getting an error,
and you also have untyped lists/arrays, etc, in the language.

Looks too much like Perl or something, to me :)

> like Smalltalk.  (Ignoring
> Smalltalk's #become ... :)
> There are plenty of examples of "real-life" development in bothRubyand Smalltalk...
> If your prior OOP experience has been solely with watered-down
> OOP languages like C++ or Java, then, my condolences.

OK, I humbly have to accept your condolences then :)

> But static typing is not required for "real-life" development.  :)

Obviously not, I have also seen a few sizable systems entirely built
in PHP or Perl or whatever,
after they started out as a "pilot" and later they didnt have the
funds to rebuild them,
decided to go live with what they had, and kept expanding on it...

But how easy and fun are they to maintain and extend, when over the
years the
original creators leave the project and new people join, etc?

With Ruby, I need more experience to judge, I guess :)

> Regards,
>
> Bill