From: Ben Giddings <ben@...>
Date: 2003-07-17T00:31:38+09:00
Subject: Re: Other languages' features in Ruby

On Wed July 16 2003 10:49 am, John Johnson wrote:
> > 
> > Is there a good way to get what type checking does for you?  Maybe some
> ...
> > catching typos, like calling the class variable @my_var, but ending up
> > using it as @myvar.
> > 
> 
> Test First Design?

Ok, but compare:

"Test 473 failed: expecting 17, got 18"

with

"warning: on line 765 of myfile.rb: @myvar may not have been initialized"

I think the second one is more useful, and it is a typical type of output from 
compilers for compiled languages.  It is much quicker and zeroes in on the 
actual problem faster than a test failing.  I'm of course not advocating that 
Ruby become a compiled language, but it would be nice if there were a way to 
do the kind of checks that a compiler does.

Ben