From: Alan Chen <alan@...>
Date: 2002-09-13T08:13:44+09:00
Subject: Re: not grasping the method overloading/multi-dispatch thing

On Fri, Sep 13, 2002 at 07:15:36AM +0900, Paul Brannan wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 13, 2002 at 05:40:53AM +0900, Phil Tomson wrote:
> > In Ruby it's not really considered a downside... it seems to be an 
> > acceptable practice.
> 
> But should it be?  If I write a class, and someone modifies it, he had
> better have a darn good reason for modifying it.  If everyone goes
> around messing with the Integer and Float classes, how can we make any
> guarantees about the behavior of Integers and Floats?
> 
> > Perhaps this idea should be proposed as an idiomatic way of 
> > solving the problem - ie. "We don't need multi-methods since all classes 
> > are open in Ruby".
> 
> Not all classes are open.  I sometimes freeze my classes to make sure no
> one messes with them behind my back.
> 
> Paul

So now, I might have a darn good reason to modify your class and
you've gone and frozen it ;) I don't think the point of the language
is to bulletproof it self from mis-programming.

I guess my problem is that multi-methods seems to dedicate alot code,
execution speed, and complexity to mostly prevent me from doing things
which may be perfectly reasonable. I think multi-methods would take
away from the focus on getting the code and design to function well
and move emphasis to "type wrangling".  Don't get me wrong, I know
that typing helps eliminate a class of errors, but it adds a whole
host of errors and design difficulties which I think obfuscate to
problem - at least at the level of programming that Ruby is best
suited for.

-- 
Alan Chen
Digikata LLC
http://digikata.com