Re: [groovy-dev] I'll give a Groovy presentation at the Jazoon'08

Eugene Vigdorchik wrote:
> Hi,
> It suffices to put the types on parameters only, the return type then 
> should be inferable.
> (Recursive methods are an exception, but that is another story)

By the compiler, or by the user?  How would a user infer the return type 
of something like this:

def getAllConnectingCities(String origin_city)

?

 From the name, it's probably returning a collection.  But is it a Set, 
a List, an array, or a hash table?  Or is it returning multiple values 
wrapped in an Object[], say the collection along with distance of the 
nearest and furthest cities?

Best,
Martin
> 
> Eugene.
> 
> On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 5:02 PM, Martin C. Martin 
> <martin@...
<mailto:martin@...>> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>     Aaron Digulla wrote:
> 
>         Quoting "Martin C. Martin" <martin@...
>         <mailto:martin@...>>:
> 
>             Do you think it would be appropriate to point out these
>             advantages,
>             along with the disadvantages?
> 
> 
>         You're right. I wanted to avoid doing a second "what's great
>         about groovy" presentation (Ted Neward already does that on
>         Monday and I probably can't compete with him :) and while doing
>         so, I went too far. Thanks for pointing that out.
> 
> 
>     No problem.  And thanks for allowing us to look over your
>     presentation before you give it.  You seem genuinely interested in
>     telling the audience what they should know if they're considering
>     Groovy, which I suspect is why you're so willing to discuss the
>     presentation in the first place.
> 
>     I think a lot of what you've experienced is exposure to a different
>     culture.  I always find this opens my eyes: things I'd taken for
>     granted as positives in my old culture are now seen as both good and
>     bad.  I used to believe that static typing meant increased
>     productivity, because the compiler could catch problems and save me
>     lots of debugging time. But after using a number of dynamic
>     languages, I can see the costs: reading C++ or Java code now looks
>     like talking to a child, since you have to spell out every little
>     thing, even things that should be obvious.
> 
>     I've gotten into a habit of putting types on most function
>     declarations, both arguments and return.  A function declaration is
>     a unit of abstraction, and callers generally don't have to look
>     inside it to know how to call it.  But in the function body I
>     usually skip the types, to make it more readable.
> 
>     Out of curiosity, does anybody else use that pattern?
> 
>     Best,
>     Martin
> 
> 
> 
> 
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