Dynamic language, refactoring IDE. Pick one.
Yes, dynamic typing makes it exceedingly difficult to do automated refactoring. But at the same time, some of the supporting comments on this entry seem to miss the point. For example:
Has any ruby-python developer tried changing a method , class , property , package (if any) name in over 500 files in 2-3 seconds without breaking the code? to those people, if your answer is no, please shut up.
I would submit that most “ruby-python developers” would feel a bit strange if they found themselves managing a system where a particular object was referenced by name in five hundred different files. Sure, if you’re doing Java you need the equivalent of sixteen times the total printed volume of the Library of Congress just to, say, echo “Hello, $USERNAME” on a web page, but other languages don’t have that “feature”; one of the great selling points of the popular dynamic languages is that they’re concise, and so you don’t end up spewing thousands of files in most cases.
Which isn’t to say refactoring isn’t hard, just that the extreme use cases which always get trotted out in these debates are often apples-and-oranges comparisons.
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