From: Sean O'Dell <sean@...>
Date: 2003-11-20T06:18:01+09:00
Subject: Re: "stereotyping" (was: Re: Strong Typing (Re: Managing metadata about attribute types)

On Wednesday 19 November 2003 12:53 pm, Austin Ziegler wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Nov 2003 02:51:02 +0900, Sean O'Dell wrote:
> > Actually, kind_of? is far more informative. kind_of? indicates
> > that it belongs to a pre-described interface (a contract), with a
> > fixed collection of methods with parameters which are also known.
>
> Not in Ruby, it doesn't. #kind_of? tells you that it has a
> particular name in its ancestry. Nothing more, nothing less.
> Treating a name as a contract is improper, because that's not the
> case at all.

I agree.  My intention is to elevate us to something more than respond_to? and 
kind_of? calls.  I misused kind_of?, sorry.  I meant to use an imaginary 
method that says "this object implements this interface."

	Sean O'Dell