What Happens If I... » ruby http://blog.arlim.org Kim Wallmark's Technical Wanderings Tue, 20 Jul 2010 05:45:10 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Mixins vs. typeclasses http://blog.arlim.org/2009/11/22/mixins-vs-typeclasses/ http://blog.arlim.org/2009/11/22/mixins-vs-typeclasses/#comments Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:11:01 +0000 Kim Wallmark http://blog.arlim.org/?p=78 This is a fragment of a discussion on polymorphism that I had in another context. I was pleased by how well this explanation came out, and wanted to put it in a more public format.

I’ve thought more about the issue you raised of whether Haskell’s typeclasses are the same as Ruby’s mixins, and I think my answer is a firm “sort of”. A Ruby mixin provides a consistent API and a consistent implementation to any class it’s added to. A Haskell typeclass provides a consistent API and an individual implementation to any type it’s defined for. It’s roughly the difference between base classes and interfaces in C++/C#/Java.

]]> http://blog.arlim.org/2009/11/22/mixins-vs-typeclasses/feed/ 0