On 16/10/2010 19:16, Walter Bright wrote:
Being the upstart language, D needs now and then something a little more
attention-getting than generic terms. The "duck" feature is important
for two reasons:
1. duck typing is all the rage now
What??... :o
I think this is very much a wrong perception! Sure, there has been a lot
of articles, publicity and buzz surrounding duck typing in the past few
years, but that doesn't meant it's "all the rage". More concretely, it
doesn't mean that duck typing is popular, either now, or heading that
way in the future. I think dynamic languages are somewhat of a niche
(even if a growing one), but not really heading to be mainstream in
medium/large scale projects.
Rather I think that the duck typing fanboys are just very vocal about
it. (Kinda like the Tea Party movement... )
BTW, just as a clarifying side note, duck typing is nothing new in terms
of language features. Duck typing is just dynamic typing as combined
with Object Oriented. What is new about duck typing is not so much in
the language, but rather the development philosophy that states:
* dynamic typing with OO is an equally valid approach (if not better)
than traditional static typing OO, for thinking about objects and their
behavior,
* documentation, clear code, and testing are good enough to ensure
correct usage (especially testing, in some circles).
Note: I'm not implying I agree with the above, I'm just paraphrasing.
--
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer
