From: Bryan Murphy <bryan@...>
Date: 2002-10-01T12:42:19+09:00
Subject: Re: thoughts on typelessness

Chris Gehlker wrote:

>> While I understand your point, I do have to disagree and say that 
>> Mixins aren't anything like interfaces coming from my perspective.
>> From my perspective, interfaces and/or contracts are a way to 
>> unerringly guarantee than an object *ALWAYS* provides specific 
>> functionality.
>
>
> You lost me there, Bryan, perhaps because the only languages that I've 
> used interface inheritance in are Java and ObjC and Ruby. But in Java, 
> anyway, when I say "implements xyz" I'm free to define xyz any way I 
> want as log as the method takes standard arguments. In fact the 
> message name is really no more than a hint as to what the method does. 
> How can that be a 'contract'?
>
You're taking me way too literally.  Had I dwelled in horrendous detail 
over every little word in my original post I would have been a bit more 
carefull about my use of Interfaces and Contracts as they are not the 
same thing (though they share similar features).  My main point is 
simply that people want an easy and convenient way to guarantee that 
things behave a certain way in Ruby.   Interfaces, contracts, static 
typing, they are all attempts to do this that solve different parts of 
the problem but don't solve the problem as a whole.

Bryan