This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by Obie Fernandez. Original Post: Compiling in Vain Feed Title: Obie On Rails (Has It Been 9 Years Already?) Feed URL: http://jroller.com/obie/feed/entries/rss Feed Description: Obie Fernandez talks about life as a technologist, mostly as ramblings about software development and consulting. Nowadays it's pretty much all about Ruby and Ruby on Rails. Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by Obie Fernandez Latest Posts From Obie On Rails (Has It Been 9 Years Already?)

The lack of static typing in Ruby tends to make some C++/Java people kind of crazy, so I just had to repost this gem from Rob Rypka on the ruby-lang mailing list:

It seems to me that typed variables and compilers give programmers a false sense of security about their code. Once you get the darn thing to compile, you feel like you've accomplished something, where all you've really done is satisfy the compiler - the semantics of what you've actually done are a whole 'nother can of worms (type conversion usually has a part in this).

Once you start coding in Ruby, you'll find it's pretty easy to catch those spelling/type mismatching mistakes. If you add a string and an integer, you get an error (unlike JavaScript, where "2" + 2 = "22"), so you still have to explicitly convert data (using #to_s) if the behavior is undefined (you could also define the behavior if you like). You skip the entire compilation step, so you are evaluating both proper syntax and semantics at the same time.

Bottom line: Not having typed variables or static checking really isn't that bad, and the dynamic nature of Ruby is really that good.