From: MikkelFJ <mikkelfj-anti-spam@...>
Date: 2002-09-29T19:51:25+09:00
Subject: Re: thoughts on typelessness


<dblack@candle.superlink.net> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.44.0209282304250.5063-100000@candle.superlink.net...
....
> There's a scene in Buster Keaton's film "Sherlock, Jr." where Keaton
....
> side of the gap.  A second earlier or a second later, he would indeed
> have plummeted -- but for just that instant, the necessary components
> were in place.

> Ruby objects remind me of that scene.  They are what they are at a
> given moment, whether or not that's what they were or what they will
> be.  And in their momentary permutations and capabilities, they can do
> some very powerful things.

This also very much indicate the fragility of the method.
I don't believe Ruby objects are so fragile in praxis and I think we should
not focus too hard on Rubys extreme dynamism (don't do it just because you
can).
The great thing about Ruby is that you can easily replace a file class with
a string class and still have many read operations work the same way -
without having to first carefully design an interface.

> All of this is so enthralling to me that I'm always surprised when
> people advocate explicit typing (in one form or another) for Ruby.  It
> seems that, in spite of everything (including the existence of other
> languages for those made queasy by typelessness), a number of Ruby
> users are more drawn to type-based programming than away from it.  I
> wonder why this is.

There are many reasons - the major misguided reason is compile time checking
(although spelling mistakes is a problem in Ruby). Most errors are not type
errors and most type errors are due to the type constraints and would not a
an issue in a language like Ruby.

So why would people like types: Personally I like the Ruby syntax and spirit
but also realize that most code do not expose and great dependency on
extreme dynamism - why shouldn't we be able to compile this efficiently? Yes
there are other languages - but please suggest one you'd like to use. There
are not that many to choose from although I would mention OCaml as one.
However OCaml syntax and concepts are rather different from Ruby.

Mikkel