From: Bulat Ziganshin <bulatz@...>
Date: 2002-09-27T14:29:57+09:00
Subject: Re: adding overload to ruby

Hello Dave,

Thursday, September 26, 2002, 6:35:51 PM, you wrote:

>> Fixnum a
>> return a+1
>> 
>> can be translated in integer addition and not method call

DT> Not in Ruby...

of course. you skipped point that i say about OPTIMIZING compiler. and
to efficiently compile ruby code we need to do that sort of
optimizations - or die :)

DT> I think it's possible we might see typed method parameters in future,
DT> but this isn't typing in the conventional sense: I think it wll be
DT> used as a method selector mechanism. As such it will probably incur a
DT> performance penalty if overused.

DT> I very much hope we never see typed variables.

typed variable is just a sort of precondition (btw, ruby don't include
this mechanism which can help in large-scale projects. the whole
question is what would be better - joining code, documentation and
tests together or dividing program to independent doc/code/tests
parts? btw, eiffel IDE dynamically translates program text to any
presentation view)

back to discussion: i stated 3 good things which come with typed
method declarations. i never say that all ruby code and especially
common libraries must use this. there is another ways to get reliable
and documented code, but declaring types is just very cheap and good


-- 
Best regards,
 Bulat                            mailto:bulatz@integ.ru