On May 9, 6:30 pm, Paddy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > The wikipedia article on Duck Typing has this criticism section that > needs a citation: > (Fron:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_typing#Criticism) > > An often cited criticism is this: > One issue with duck typing is that it forces the programmer to > have a much wider understanding of the code he or she is working with > at any given time. In a strongly and statically typed language that > uses type hierarchies and parameter type checking, it's much harder to > supply an unexpected object type to a class. For instance, in python, > you could easily create a class called Wine, which expects a class > implementing the "press" method as an ingredient. However, a class > called Trousers might also implement the press() method. With Duck > Typing, in order to prevent strange, hard to detect errors, the coder > needs to be aware of each potential use of the method "press", even > when it's conceptually unrelated to what he or she is working on. With > type checking and hierarchical type declarations, all wine ingredients > would be subclasses of WineIngredient or something like that, negating > the problem. > > In essence, the problem is that, "if it walks like a duck and > quacks like a duck", it could be a dragon doing a duck impersonation. > You may not always want to let dragons into a pond, even if they can > impersonate a duck. > > In practice, the issue is equivalent to not mixing dissimilar objects > for duck-typing and is handled almost transparently as part of the > knowledge of the codebase required to maintain it.[citation needed] > > I've only found this so far as a citation: > http://jessenoller.com/2007/05/30/typeducking-on-duck-vs-static-typing/ > Whilst it is good, do you know any other work that refutes the > criticism? > > (I, and many others don't see the problem, but who has written about > it). > > Thanks, Paddy.
A bit more searching gives me: http://hans.fugal.net/blog/articles/2006/07/08/duck-typing-defended And: http://www.mindview.net/WebLog/log-0025 I don't have a collection of Dynamic language books though. - Paddy. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
