From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2002-09-12T21:53:31+09:00
Subject: Re: not grasping the method overloading/multi-dispatch thing

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <dblack@candle.superlink.net>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2002 7:14 AM
Subject: Re: not grasping the method overloading/multi-dispatch thing


> Hi --
> 
> On Thu, 12 Sep 2002, Friedrich Dominicus wrote:
> 
> > dblack@candle.superlink.net writes:
> > >
> > > 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
> 
> Right, but that's the part I don't get :-)  I'm picturing things like:
> 
>   def meth(Integer n, String s)
>   ...
>   def meth(Float f, String s)
>   ...
> 
> and somewhere along the line I'm not clear on how that fits into the
> spirit/design/philosophy of Ruby.

My opinion: It just doesn't.
To declare variables at all is not Rubyish IMO
(especially when assigning types, which can be
a separate issue).
To create a method signature by assigning types
to parameters is even worse, as far as I can see.
It looks like a huge step backward toward Java
and C++.

Hal