From: bbense+comp.lang.ruby.Sep.26.02@...
Date: 2002-09-27T05:16:38+09:00
Subject: Re: adding overload to ruby

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In article <1033038093.4274.0@iapetus.uk.clara.net>,
Justin Johnson <justinj@mobiusent.com> wrote:
>
>This means that the dispatcher must find the _closest_ match rather than
>just using '==='.
>
>Doing multi dispatch does seem possible, but Matz seems to think it would be
>troublesome.  IIRC, other people have shown concerns too.
>
>How would having this feature detriment the language?
>

- - It violates the spirit of Ruby. IMHO, anything that does 

  raise ArgumentError unless ( foo.type? == String )

  does this as well. It short circuits much of the power of
  the language to allow people to use ideas they are comfortable
  with. It destroys much of the flexibilty of the language.
  If you really think you need those chains then you should
  be using another language. 
  
- - As I stated in a previous post this method overloading is 
  nothing but strict type checking in disguise. IHMO, one 
  of the whole points of ruby is to get beyond the limitations
  of type checking and start to think in different and more
  powerful ways. You lose much of the inherent power of 
  objects when you tie them down with type checking. 

- - Some thing that I would like to see more support for is
  the idea of Interfaces from Objective C. This is a kind
  of contract of methods that you support. Modules and
  the kind_of? method sort of support this, but not in
  a very straightforward way. Also, I think much of the
  demand for various kinds of "typed" Ruby could really
  be satisfied by rethinking the structure of error objects. 

- - Booker C. bense  

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