From: Sean O'Dell <sean@...>
Date: 2003-11-20T07:25:19+09:00
Subject: Re: "stereotyping" (was: Re: Strong Typing (Re: Managing metadata about attribute types)

On Wednesday 19 November 2003 02:09 pm, Charles Hixson wrote:
> Sean O'Dell wrote:
> >On Wednesday 19 November 2003 01:01 pm, Chad Fowler wrote:
> >>On Thu, 20 Nov 2003, Sean O'Dell wrote:
> >>
> >>...
> >>
> >>As demonstrated previously in this thread, class and/or module
> >> inheritance checking *doesn't* give you any info about what a method
> >> does or what parameters it takes.
> >
> >Actually, it tells you exactly.  If a class inherits from String, you know
> > it has all the methods String does, and you know exactly what parameters
> > they ...	Sean O'Dell
>
> No, you don't know that at all.  It's a reasonable presumption, but any,
> or all, or the methods that you think are there might have been
> overridden.  And might do something totally different.  And this may be
> for either a good reason or a silly reason.

But I would make the assumption that if they were overridden, they were 
overridden properly, and that the methods my object needs are present.  To 
declare a certain inheritance, and then to break it, is something I don't 
feel we should be enforcing.  That's up to the developer if they choose to do 
that.  Also, if you want to enforce parameter checking, that's a whole other 
ballgame to me.  Not something I'm interested in; it's too intrusive.

	Sean O'Dell