From: Dave Thomas <Dave@...>
Date: 2002-02-03T23:35:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Variable types

Chris "boris" Ross <chris@darkrock.co.uk> writes:

> I am from the camp where variables should be declared - that way
> everyone knows what the score is :)

In that case, welcome over to our camp :)

I strongly believe that strong beliefs need challenging every now and
then. That doesn't mean that the beliefs are wrong. But how will you
know unless you try them?

I also believed strongly in typing and all the stuff that goes with
it. I would have argued against anyone who told be that variables
didn't need declaring.  But after spending only a little time with
Ruby, I realized that its approach to variables is infinitely more
flexible (which makes refactoring, and hence keeping code tidy, a lot
easier). I also discovered to my surprise that the resulting code was
no less reliable that stuff where the variables were declared. Partly
that's due to the fact that in Ruby the test/code cycle is trivially
short, so you can typically test after writing a line or two of
code. Typos get caught early.

Anyway, that's my experience. Yours may be different. However, I'd
suggest that you probably want to spend a month or so using Ruby as it
comes, and then see what your experience tells you about changes
needed to the language.


Regards



Dave