Things Andy would like #77245

[andrewducker]

Compile-time Duck Typing in C#.

Comments

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

not to be confused with Duck Taping :-)

Personally, I am not sure whether it would be great or a hassle. I am awfully fond of strong typing - but immensely irritated at times by what seem unnecessary casts...

Does 4.0 do it?

[andrewducker]

No reason you can't have static typing and duck typing.

Let's say you have an interface IClickable that specifies a void Click() method and a class Button with a void Click() method on it, then there's no reason why a smart compiler couldn't accept that Button can be passed as an IClickable even if its declaration doesn't mention that it implements that interface.

It'd be a bit slower than just checking the list of implemented interfaces, but it could still be done.

4.0 allows you to do it weakly - using dynamic - which uses reflection to make the call under the covers. But you lose your static typing that way.

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

4.0 does, sort of. If you instantiate an object as "dynamic", you should be able to use any of its methods dynamically. It's an "opt-in" system, which sounds like the best approach -- C# is (still) statically typed, but for those times you need it, you can do dynamic types.

Should make mock types a lot easier to use.