From: Friedrich Dominicus <frido@...>
Date: 2002-09-12T21:00:04+09:00
Subject: Re: not grasping the method overloading/multi-dispatch thing

dblack@candle.superlink.net writes:

> Hello --
> 
> (Starting a new thread, to make it easier to ignore :-)
> 
> I've been following the multi-method/dispatch thread, and finding
> myself not grasping an important central part of it.
> 
> Namely... doesn't this more or less completely change the nature of
> Ruby?
Yes it does. Therefor it won't happen. 
> 
> At a fundamental level, I'm not getting how method signatures and
> dispatching on type could be "added" to Ruby, such that Ruby was
> still, so to speak, Ruby.  Among other things, once that option
> existed, I think we'd see a lot of code where there was only one
> version of a method, but it was still typed.
As Matz pointed out overloading would be in the spirit of Ruby
> 
> OK, trying to clear the cobwebs and think it through....
> 
> It seems to me that exactly one of the following three things has to
> be true:
> 
>   1. no OO language L can exist, such that (a) L is a good
>      language, and (b) L does not have dispatching on type;
I don't think this states what it should. It's not possible to think
of an OO languages witout types read class.

>   3. there can be such a language, and Ruby *is* such a language.
No Ruby method do know qute well what types and methods belong to
which class.

Regards
Friedrich