From: "Jesús Gabriel y Galán" <jgabrielygalan@...>
Date: 2010-11-12T17:07:23+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby vs PHP for the web

On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 11:50 PM, Mike Stephens <rubfor@recitel.net> wrote:
> Charles Calvert wrote in post #960599:
>>  Ruby uses
>> strong, though dynamic, typing.
>
> Can you explain what you mean? That seems a contradiction in terms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_typing

It means that the language imposes restrictions about how different
types are mixed, and avoids implicit conversions of types, among other
things. Compare:

Javascript (weak typing):

2 + '2' => '22'

Ruby (strong typing):

2 + '2' => TypeError: String can't be coerced into Fixnum

On the other hand:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_typing#Dynamic_typing

Most of the type checking (if there actually is some type checking) is
done at runtime, and while values have types variables do not:

Java (static typing):

int i = 3;
i = "abc" => Error

Ruby (dynamic typing):

i = 3
i = "abc"

It's also related to the very powerful duck typing, which you can search around.

Jesus.