Episode 49: Dynamic Languages for Static Minds

In this Episode we talk about dynamic languages for
statically-typed minds, or in other words: which are the
interesting features people should learn when they go from a
langauge such as Java or C# to a language like Python or Ruby. We
used Ruby as the concrete example language.

We started the discussion about important features with the concept
of dynamically changing an object's type and the idea of message
passing. We then looked at the concepts of blocks and closures.
Next in line is a discussion about functions that create functions
as well as currying. This lead into a quick discussion about
continuations. Open classes, aliasing and the relationship to AOP
was next on our agenda.

We then looked considered a somewhat more engineering-oriented view
and looked at the importance of testing and what are the best steps
of getting from static programming to dynamic programming. Finally,
we discussed a bit about the current (as of October 2006) state of
dynamic languages on mainstream platforms.