> Lähettäjä: Eric Anderson <eric@afaik.us>
> Aihe: Re: Type inference in ruby
>
> Trevor Andrade wrote:
> > I was wondering whether it would be possible to have a type inference system
> > in ruby. My question was asked before
>
> I am sure it is possible to implement but I think most people end up
> wondering why do it? If you want a typed system (strong or weak) there
> are plenty of languages that support it natively. For me that is one of
> the reasons I left those other languages. For me a type system has too
> much coding overhead without much benefit. The two advantages are:
>
> * Catches type errors
> * Possibly better optimizations
>
> To answer the first advantage Ruby encourages Unit testing. Unit testing
> it 10 times better than type checking because it can not only check for
> valid types but also check for logic errors. So why spend the overhead
> of a type system when unit testing is better.
>
> The second advantage again isn't an issue for me. Ruby is fast enough.
> If I need it faster I can profile the code to find bottlenecks. If I
> need it even faster I can recode the bottlenecks in C. Again, the
> overhead of a type system is not worth even the possibility of better
> optimizations.
A TI system could be implemented as a separate library to be run
on some code rather than as a part of that code, as an additional
testing facility.
That being said, I think it may be too much trouble for little gain.
> Just my two cents,
>
> Eric
E