On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 4:10 PM, Robert Dober <robert.dober / gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear native speakers
>
> I have been quite bothered with the usage of the word "dude" recently.
> Not that I dislike the word itself but I feel it should be reserved to
> friends using it in a quite informal context.
> Am I wrong and do I have to adapt or is there some kind of agreement
> with my POV?
>
> And sorry if you think this kind of netiquette question is OT.

Well, I'm no native speaker myself, but I'm pretty certain that you
can just do following, really simple

def dudify(context)
  context.send('dude')
rescue NoMethodError
  def context.dude
    ''
  end
end

Now, everytime you are unsure if your context replies well to dude,
you can just dudify it beforehand, and everytime you send another dude
it will just blank it out.
Of course you could use a polite version for special occasions:

def dudify(context)
  return if context.respond_to?(:dude)
  def context.dude
    ''
  end
end

But if you are frequenting rubyist circles then it shouldn't be any
problem to just rely on duck typing and stop worrying.

Hope that clarifies things a little,
^ manveru

> Thanks in advantage
> Robert