[MacRuby-devel] Static Typing

[Henry Maddocks]

On 6/01/2011, at 5:31 PM, Rich Morin wrote:

>> No.
> 
> Gotta love categorical answers like this one.  They
> always sound so definitive and are all too frequently
> shown to be incorrect.
> 
> There's some really interesting work being done in
> this area, so a better answer might be "not soon":
> 
>  The Mirah Programming Language
>  http://www.mirah.org/
> 
>  Dynamic Inference of Static Types for Ruby
>  http://www.cs.umd.edu/~jfoster/papers/popl11.pdf


Neither of those projects have anything to do with MacRuby and as far as I can they don't have much to do with MRI either so their impact will be academic at best. The Mirah project is trying to make ruby more like Java. Well there already is a language a lot like Java, it's called Java. If you prefer the Obj-C way of doing things then feel free to use Obj-C. Me, I like [Mac]Ruby just the way it is.

I don't go into McDonalds and complain that they don't make chicken like KFC. I go to KFC.

Seeing as I'm not a member of the MacRuby core team, or any team, you should take what I say with a bucket of salt. Therefore my answer was more a vote against static typing.

Henry