From: Bulat Ziganshin <bulatz@...>
Date: 2002-10-01T23:09:49+09:00
Subject: Re: thoughts on typelessness

Hello Dave,

Tuesday, October 01, 2002, 6:00:35 PM, you wrote:

>> 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
>>         ....

DT> Ruby types are not releated to classes. They're related to object
DT> protocols (the infamous Duck Typing). That's what gives Ruby much of
DT> its appeal. Testing for classes is really very poor style, and
DT> artificially constrains the users of your code.

there is tradeoff between flexibility and reliability. especially for
such types as Fixnum ;)  which has never to be emulated by some other
class

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