From: Todd Benson <caduceass@...>
Date: 2008-02-22T22:47:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby type-safe? Ruby strongly/weakly typed? Ruby pitfalls?

On Tue, Feb 5, 2008 at 7:20 PM, rule.rule.rule@gmail.com
<rule.rule.rule@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>  I added some paragraphs to the Ruby article on Wikipedia:
>
>  Type system
>  - Is Ruby type-safe?
>  - Is Ruby strongly typed?
>
>  Criticism
>  - Lack of variable declarations
>  - Dynamic typing
>  - Overloaded operators
>  - Reflective and meta-programming features
>
>  Some "peer review" appreciated :)
>
>      http://tinyurl.com/fpwes
>
>  Please feel free to improve upon it, or post comments in this thread.
>
>  Greetings,

The concept that water is fluid but can only either erode rock over a
long period or infiltrate and then break it quickly by freezing comes
to mind.

Just a thought.

Small rant ahead...

I've been concerned about using Ruby meta-programming features for
some time.  People talk about fast development and then go on about
the requirement for lengthy unit tests; brag about them, even.  We're
talking about tests that cannot catch every edge case in a complicated
application.  Mix that with rigid standards/conventions in a
development environment -- another requirement, all in the interest of
productivity, of course -- and the turn around for product is better,
but not by much.  Not to mention maintenance/support/refactoring,
which can be costly in hours.  The same goes, it seems, for other
dynamic-based languages.

I'd like someday to see a long-based economic study for a business
adapting Ruby in lieu of, say, Java (I really don't like Java that
much btw :)

Todd