From: Sean O'Dell <sean@...>
Date: 2003-11-20T08:53:21+09:00
Subject: Re: "stereotyping" (was: Re: Strong Typing (Re: Managing metadata about attribute types)

On Wednesday 19 November 2003 03:48 pm, Austin Ziegler wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Nov 2003 06:29:12 +0900, Sean O'Dell wrote:
> > I don't advocate inheritance as a means to communication
> > conformity with an interface. Just a keyword that says "I
> > implement this interface" is perfectly acceptable.
>
> I've already addressed the uselessness of this. This could also be
> implemented outside of the Ruby core -- even as a C extension.
>
> > I would also wager that if it were available, and powerful, you
> > would return to at least a little bit of type checking. People
> > only miss something for so long before they get used to not having
> > it. Of course you don't miss it now.
>
> I don't miss it now because I am *currently* working with three
> different languages on concurrent projects. Delphi (Object Pascal)
> is strongly/strictly typed, and it's really infuriating because I
> can't just write what I want to *do*; I have to type everything,
> too. Visual Basic for Applications is optionally typed, but is much
> easier to use if you do type variables. Ruby, on the other hand,
> allows me to write the code that I want without having to worry
> about typing at all.
>
> The *only* place where I can foresee needing a typing mechanism in
> Ruby is when I look at wrapping methods in SOAP or other RPC
> mechanisms.

Why only in SOAP or RPC mechanisms?  What makes them different from someone 
who calls into a library?

	Sean O'Dell