From: patrick-may@... (Patrick May)
Date: 2002-09-13T14:22:25+09:00
Subject: Re: not grasping the method overloading/multi-dispatch thing

Dale Martenson <dmartenson@multitech.com> wrote in message news:<20C86D2620F6D411A199009005DC0102016D1830@exchange serve.multitech.prv>...
> I see this as a big advantage to the language. 
> 
> 1. Overloading doesn't break a great language. It just enhances it. Ruby
> would still retain everything that makes it neat.

You can already write ruby code to do everything proposed.  The issue
is whether such proposals deserve some sugar.  That is, none of these
proposals enhance the scope of what is possible, only what is
encouraged.

> 2. It allows for "cleaner" solutions where overloading is the "best" option.
> It could be argued that overloading is needed to satisfy POLS. If Ruby is
> truly the best OO language, how can it not have overloading!!  :-)

Overloaded methods are the same as a conditional on type.  To me, this
is never the best option, not when you can put methods on the class to
convert it to the form you need.

I'd be curious to see code that

a. calls for overloading on type
b. couldn't be handled by pushing code up to the classes of the
argument objects

> 3. If Ruby is ever to be JIT-compiled, knowing a parameters type has
> advantages for performance since code can be optimized.

* meat performance is always more important than metal performance.
* metal performance is fine, and might get better with parrot / mono
bytecode.

I feel myself getting religous, so I should hush up.

Hope I wasn't offensive,

~ Patrick