[BeFlatXIII]

> some clever people decide - hey, if you pass a string I'll look up the person object - so you can pass an object or a string - which makes all sorts of convoluted code paths

Do you have hints on how to avoid being one of those 10x clever programmers while programming a prototype? I find that I am most likely to write functions like that when there's some variables that I don't want to pass 5 layers down the call stack and then, in your example, would accept either a string (in which case those variables use their default values) or the Person object, where the variables are pulled from the Person's attributes.

[david422]

I don't really, but I guess I could say that I have developed in statically typed languages and dynamically typed languages (professionally) for over a decade and I've always found that using the "power" of dynamic languages always ends up causing (me) more frustration in the long run- basically classes of bugs or time wasted that simply doesn't occur with statically typed languages. So for me, I tend to spend a little more time up front to try not to waste (my) time in the future.

> I find that I am most likely to write functions like that when there's some variables that I don't want to pass 5 layers down the call stack

I agree for a prototype, there are some tradeoffs to be made. However, very often prototypes can end up becoming production. Temporary decisions often become permanent ones. Just something to keep in mind.