From: Sean O'Dell <sean@...>
Date: 2003-11-20T05:22:02+09:00
Subject: Re: "stereotyping" (was: Re: Strong Typing (Re: Managing metadata about attribute types)

On Wednesday 19 November 2003 11:46 am, Chad Fowler wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Nov 2003, Sean O'Dell wrote:
>
> # I'm clear on the subject of dynamic typing, and I'm not an advocate for
> static # typing.  Being a strong advocate for one or the other is foolish,
> in my # opinion.  Both are useful, and both can be employed here, so I BEG
> you to # please employ SOME form of built-in interface checking.  Having
> absolutely NO # mechanism leaves people who need to check for certain
> methods and parameters # hanging in the wind.
> #
>
> If you really need something that bad, how about respond_to?  If you need
> something more robust, then there's types.rb by Eivind Eklund.

Because something of this nature should be built-in.  It's faster when written 
in C and doesn't have to be dynamically loaded via "require."  I also don't 
believe type checking is something that there should be competing libraries 
for.  Also, respond_to? doesn't say anything about what a method does or what 
parameters it takes.  Checking for an implemented interface declares all of 
that.

	Sean O'Dell