Wanted: Citation supporting Duck Typing

[Paddy]

On May 9, 6:30 pm, Paddy <paddy3... at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> The wikipedia article on Duck Typing has this criticism section that
> needs a citation:
> (Fron:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_typing#Criticism)
>
> An often cited criticism is this:
>     One issue with duck typing is that it forces the programmer to
> have a much wider understanding of the code he or she is working with
> at any given time. In a strongly and statically typed language that
> uses type hierarchies and parameter type checking, it's much harder to
> supply an unexpected object type to a class. For instance, in python,
> you could easily create a class called Wine, which expects a class
> implementing the "press" method as an ingredient. However, a class
> called Trousers might also implement the press() method. With Duck
> Typing, in order to prevent strange, hard to detect errors, the coder
> needs to be aware of each potential use of the method "press", even
> when it's conceptually unrelated to what he or she is working on. With
> type checking and hierarchical type declarations, all wine ingredients
> would be subclasses of WineIngredient or something like that, negating
> the problem.
>
>     In essence, the problem is that, "if it walks like a duck and
> quacks like a duck", it could be a dragon doing a duck impersonation.
> You may not always want to let dragons into a pond, even if they can
> impersonate a duck.
>
> In practice, the issue is equivalent to not mixing dissimilar objects
> for duck-typing and is handled almost transparently as part of the
> knowledge of the codebase required to maintain it.[citation needed]
>
> I've only found this so far as a citation:
>  http://jessenoller.com/2007/05/30/typeducking-on-duck-vs-static-typing/
> Whilst it is good, do you know any other work that refutes the
> criticism?
>
> (I, and many others don't see the problem, but who has written about
> it).
>
> Thanks, Paddy.

A bit more searching gives me:

  http://hans.fugal.net/blog/articles/2006/07/08/duck-typing-defended
And:
  http://www.mindview.net/WebLog/log-0025

I don't have a collection of Dynamic language books though.

- Paddy.