*sigh*

[andrewducker]

I really wish that C# had duck typing.

Comments

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Take it that this is no good, or misses the point?

[andrewducker]

Sadly, the way they've done it means that you lose compile-time type-checking. You're basically saying "Take this animal, and return to me a proxy object which implements IDuck and passes calls along to the animal when I tell it to Quack()." But the checking as to whether the animal is actually capable of quacking happens at runtime, not compile time.

It's not completely pointless, but it's not nearly as expressive as having it in the base language would be.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Ah - I can see that that would be bad. The last piece on duck typing I read seemed to be saying that the developer had to train themselves to not expect checking to work - or was it not to build in their own checks: it was some variation on "Checking is for the Weak!", anyway....

[andrewducker]

On code of a small size, that's only got a single developer working on it, I wouldn't worry so much. With 40-odd developers in three countries working on my current project, I want all the assurances I can get! (so far - compiler, unit tests running automatically on checkin, and daily automated acceptance tests)

You can do duck typing on compilation. Google's language "Go" does it - it just checks that a class has all the methods that an interface defines. A tiny bit slower than making the class declare that it implements an interface, but with the advantage that you can reuse classes that you don't have control over.

I shall keep my fingers crossed for the next version of c# :->

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

or this :-)

[andrewducker]

There is nothing that cannot be done with Duck Tape, tis true :->

Nice quote I saw this morning. "All DIY problems can be fixed with either Duck Tape or WD40. If it moves too much, apply Duck Tape. If it doesn't move enough apply WD40."

[pete stevens (from livejournal.com)]

I was always concerned by Nuclear Duck Tape.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000NG3ZKI/downandoutint-20

I'm not sure if I was more upset that nuclear reactors were actually made of Duck Tape, or that ordinary Duck Tape wasn't good enough for the job.