"Conrad Schneiker" <schneik / us.ibm.com> writes:

> Over the last year, the expressed consensus of the long term expert Ruby 
> users seems to have been that they very rarely encounter the sorts of 
> problems where strong static type checking would be useful--indeed, so 
> rarely so that strong static type checking would actually be 
> counterproductive in terms of overall productivity at the same level of 
> quality. (I haven't seen a satisfying theoretical explanation of why this 
> is the case, but I think that part of the reason is that off by one errors 
> and dirty data cause many more problems in practice than dirty syntax 
> ((type-wise))--and compilers are oblivious to these things.)

And because Ruby (and Smalltalk) encourage code a little, test a
little (or, to keep Kevin happy, test a little, code a little). You
find things as you type, so the problems just never escalate. This
isn't just a compiled vs. interpretive issue. The fact that
'everything's an object' means that testing itself is a heap easier too.


Dave


(and I 100% endorse your last paragraph too!)