[bad_user]

> I say SolScript is "duck typed" and "scripted", because that's how it feels to program SolScript. However, under the hood, SolScript is a statically typed, compiled language.

Duck typing refers to the ability of making shit up at runtime, as in the ability for functions, classes or code to manifest at runtime and to respond to user queries based on runtime info. It doesn't refer to a lack of explicit types in your code, since in a static language types are still there and still have to be something concrete and solvable at compile-time. It doesn't even refer to structural typing, because again, the types themselves have to be solvable at compile time.

I'm a static languages fan and I've also worked a lot with dynamic languages. The ability to make shit up at runtime is much more than the ability to call a method on an object without being explicit about the interface used. This is not about succinctness as as it about programming style. With an expressive static language used to its strengths, as a developer you want to write code that is as close to provably correct as possible, so even if the static language used is very expressive, the style is oriented around modeling the problem domain with types. In a dynamic language on the other hand, the focus is on the raw data that needs to be manipulated and code is written to make shit up on the fly (i.e. method_missing, eval, classes manifested at runtime by means of meta-programming, etc...).

Hence my opinion that duck typing shouldn't be used outside the context of dynamic languages, because people might get the wrong idea about it.