From: William Djaja Tjokroaminata <billtj@...>
Date: 2002-10-01T22:39:55+09:00
Subject: Re: thoughts on typelessness

Hi,

For me, it is because I assume that my code user (sometimes including
myself) will make mistakes, such as giving the code a String when a Fixnum
is expected.  Therefore, so that I can catch the error as early as
possible (to give more useful hints to the user that it is his/her input
that is wrong, not the code), I usually code

    def func (a)
        raise "type error" unless a.kind_of? Fixnum
        ....

Now, I just want a convenience in writing the above code if I can just
write

    def func (Fixnum a)
        ....

In this case, that's it.  The new code is not more safe than the code that
we can write right now with Ruby.  It is just more convenient, I guess...

(Well, but then, if the above proposal is accepted, we can use it further
for interpreter/compiler optimization also, and not just simple type error
checking as above...)

Regards,

Bill
===========================================================================
Chris Gehlker <canyonrat@mac.com> wrote:
> 1) Why do they want that
> and
> 2) What does "behave a certain way" mean?

> Though those questions aren't as distinct for me as the above dichotomy 
> implies. If I use the same method name in two different classes, I seem 
> to be expressing the idea that they are the 'same behavior' at some 
> level of abstraction but obviously they are different at some level or 
> detail. Even in C, adding ints is not really the same thing as adding 
> floats.