Could you imagine any other way to have OO implemented than the classic class-based approach? - oop

I've lately been thinking a lot about alternatives to the class-based approach to object-orientation.
One thing which bugs me in today's languages is that we often use static classes / singletons to design single (global) objects because there isn't any other way to do it, so in my opinion it's rather a hack than a feature.
Another thing is that Java for instance allows the programmer to have enums with additional data (global state) and functionality which make them kind of object in my eyes, too.
Anyway, what I'd like to know is whether you have any ideas for a different approach to object-orientation in a compiled and efficient language (therefore, creating objects by prototyping is probably not a good idea) or, if you don't have any, whether there're things in the classic OO approach which bug you a lot, too.
[EDIT]:
Just to make things clear. As indicated above I already know prototype-based programming.

Check out prototype-based programming.

Take a look at the Actor Model. It's something like classes except for being asynchronous. If each actor is a Finite-State-Machine, you would have a potentially powerful system.
Erlang uses something like that, I'm told... at least similar. The point with the actor model is that it doesn't need to be implemented purely, and so does not need to be part of Erlang.
I started a small language that used that model once a few years ago. I might try it again sometime.

Now that my flame retardent suit is safely secured, I can say it: I dislike OOP.
The central problem I have with it is that it tries to come up with a single taxonomy in which every unit of functionality truly belongs.
There are a couple of problems with this. First, producing a good taxonmy is hard. People suck at creating them. Secondly, I am not convinced that you can actually structure a sensible, maintainable, hierarchy that will withstand change in a project containing a lot of entities; the whole practice of refactoring is basically acknowledging the difficulty of creating large, all incompassing taxanomies.
Actually, I think that OOP is over-engineered. Everything you can do with OOP can be done with higher-order functions (HOFs). HOFs are much more elegant, much more flexible solution to the same problems that OOP tries to address.
So if you're asking of another way to do OOP style stuff, HOFs are probably the closest alternative technology that has a similiar level of flexibility.

I think you are having trouble defining the "classical OO" approach. Is the signal method in Objective-C classical or the static method in standard C++?
In functional languages, it's easy enough to have non-object functions that, in a sense, act like objects because they return functions whose implementations are opaque. For example, the following code in Scheme
(define (create-ball color)
(lambda (attribute-name)
(if (equal? attribute-name "color")
color
"method-not-supported"))))
will output a function which isn't officially an "object" but it can act like one since it stores state, but you're not very clear about what exactly is wrong with the object-oriented paradigms you have been exposed to.

take a deep look at javascript which has the prototype based model or check out lua which has a some strange way to implement object orientation

Take a look at CLOS, which is basically function/method based.

Google's Go language takes a decidedly different approach to object orientation, maybe worth a look.

Related

Could override be deprecated?

There is a Design Principle that says Favor composition over inheritance and its advertised benefit is that it simplifies design. Let's agree on that as background for this question.
So, could override be deprecated? Could we, in theory, get rid of it for good?
Let's be a bit over zealous on the above mentioned Design Principle and take it to the extreme: composition all the way. One reason should be enough for now, override abuse.
One question arises: are we, programmers, going to loose something? Is any power lost trying to prevent some possible abuse?
So, what applications are there for override and can they be achieved otherwise? Should they?
Not only is this a completely radical and impractical proposal, it's not a particularly compelling one. Just because a feature gets abused doesn't mean that it should be removed entirely. People have been abusing all sorts of things for a very long time, but that hardly implies that they don't serve a useful purpose when used correctly.
Design patterns are one thing; designing an intentionally limited language to conform with your ideal notion of a good design pattern is quite another. To my mind, it's an exercise in futility. Programmers will still find something to abuse.
And I take issue with the central assumption that any use of override is inappropriate or abusive. There are lots of cases where you want to take advantage of inheritance implying an is-a relationship. Sure, this model doesn't fit the real world 100% of the time, but there are plenty of times that it does.
The Animal and Shape class examples that you read about in textbooks might be a bit contrived, but I frequently use inheritance in real-world applications.
That's not to imply that I disagree with the sentiment that one should generally or when in doubt, favor composition over inheritance. But that's not saying that inheritance is bad and should never be used.
If you remove inheritance altogether you remove a significant feature of OOP design.
Using inheritance allows you to use a "is a" design, which has a strong meaning in OOP design, and of course saves code redundancy.
If you'd use only encapsulation you'd have to either expose the members (which isn't always what you want (raises design complexity because of the amount of stuff the programmer needs to know about).
Or, make wrapper methods that will call the member's methods (which is redundant).
Besides that, lets assume you know the difference between overriding and hiding, you can see that most OOP languages will choose to use strictly overriding when given the choice.
This is because overriding is usually more intuitive than hiding.
So, if you remove overriding, and still allow inheritance, you are left with hiding. That usually leads to many runtime errors and un-expected results with type conflicts.
Farther more you won't be able to have things like an array or list of base class pointers that point a lot of different derived classes. Because if you don't have overrides it won't be able to call the specified derived class method, it will only call the same base class method for all of them.
I've added a response on behalf of astander extracting from his link (hope you don't mind)
For example, one advantage with inheritance is that it is easier to
use than composition. However, that ease of use comes at the cost that
it is harder to reuse because the subclass is tied to the parent
class.
One advantage of composition is that it is more flexible because
behavior can be swapped at runtime. One disadvantage of composition is
that the behavior of the system may be harder to understand just by
looking at the source. These are all factors one should think about
when applying composition over inheritance.
I'm always using polymorphism. I always seem to have a bunch of objects with some common concept behind them and a lot of code that is interested in that concept--that is, they care about Animals, not Lions and Tigers and Bears or even Carnivores. Interfaces often work better for this than superclasses, so I suppose I could get by without subclassing. (Are interfaces okay when subclassing is not?) However, I have often found that a lot of classes using an interface have identical code for the interface methods. Changing the interface to a superclass can let me get rid of a lot of duplicate code. The other situation I find myself in is where a large, complex class does what I need except for one teeny, tiny little thing. With subclassing, I can create a new class that does exactly what I need in just a few lines.
There may be a language component to this debate. When I'm writing in Java I subclass at a furious rate. When I'm writing in C# I think long and hard before overriding anything or even using interfaces. I'm not sure why and it may have more to do with the type of work I do in those languages than the languages themselves. But working in C#, I am quite sympathetic to this idea, while when working in Java...well, I'd have to toss almost all my Java code if I couldn't override.

Objects Without Behaviour

I have a question related to general OOP than specific to a language.
I was trying out a simple application (in java) and I was trying to model it like a real world scenario.
While re-factoring I realized that I came up with a simple object that just has one member and an overridden equals and hashcode.
My question is.... is it a bad oo practice to have such objects
(references to blogs etc would be welcome)
Short answer:
is it a bad oo practice to have such objects
Not necessarily, but it depends on the context.
Longer answer:
I have a question related to general OOP than specific to a language. I was trying out a simple application (in java) and I was trying to model it like a real world scenario.
There really isn't any rule stating that you should. In fact, I know of quite a few people who frown upon that statement, Uncle Bob Martin for one. It's more about modelling business processes than it is to model "real world scenarios". I've tried that in the past, and found there's no - or almost no - benefit to get from rigidly trying to model everything as it is in the real world. If anything, I think it makes your application more complex, and the more complex software becomes, the harder it becomes to maintain.
While re-factoring I realized that I came up with a simple object that just has one member and an overridden equals and hashcode.
Might be okay, as #Arseny already said, the ValueObject is a well-known way of working, although I usually don't end up with a lot of them when I write code. If more than a few of your objects doesn't have any behaviour, this might be an indication of a so-called Anemic Domain Model, which you have to be careful for (more complexity at no apparent benefit).
You can find out if you're "doing it wrong" (with variable values of "wrong", of course): just see what the collaborators are doing with your ValueObject, and see if there's anything there that resembles a calculation which actually belongs to the object itself.
However, if this is one of the few objects that doesn't contain any behaviour: well, yeah, that happens and you probably don't have to worry about it. We'd have to see some code to be conclusive in our anwers though.
For this case, no, because that's the only way to redefine the behavior of an object in a hashing data structure in Java.
For other cases there may be better and worse methods of doing things depending on whether they make sense, for example, if I want to change the order of objects in a queue, I'd prefer to implement a custom Comparator rather than inherit and override a compareTo method, especially if my new comparison routine is not "natural" for the objects.
Every design pattern has some cases that it's appropriate for and others that it's inappropriate for.
Normally, it would be considered a smell to have an object with no behaviour. The reason being that if it doesn't have any behaviour, then it isn't an object. When desiging your class you should be asking things like, "what is the class responsible for?". If it doesn't have any behaviour then this is a difficult questions to answer.
Rare exceptions to this being something like the Null Object pattern.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Object_pattern
I may be that the member of your class should actually be a member of another class.
It may also be that your class has some functionality that you haven't discovered yet.
It may also be that you are putting too much importance on the concept when a primitive type would do.
There are a number of techniques for designing OO systems, here is one of the original:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class-responsibility-collaboration_card
No it is not bad. There is Value Object pattern witch widely used and DTO pattern as well.

OOP, class/objects overkill

What is a good gauge for knowing when a class is poorly designed or even necessary. In other words when to write a class and when no to.
SOLID might help if a class is poorly designed, but it won't help answer a question like "Is object-oriented programming the best approach for this problem?"
People have done a lot of very good work in programming for mathematics and science before object-oriented programming came into vogue. If your problem falls into those categories, perhaps object-oriented programming isn't for you.
Objects are state and behavior together; they tend to map onto problem domain objects one-to-one. If that's not true for your problem, perhaps object-oriented programming isn't for you.
If you don't know an object-oriented language well, perhaps object-oriented programming isn't for you.
If your organization doesn't know and can't support object-oriented solutions, perhaps object-oriented programming isn't for you.
A lot of people will say the "SOLID Principles" are a good guideline for class design.
There are a lot of articles/podcasts concerning the SOLID Principles, just do a quick search. Here's a good start:
http://butunclebob.com/ArticleS.UncleBob.PrinciplesOfOod
rather than list a bunch of don't-do-this rules for recognizing a poorly-designed class, it is easier - and more efficient - to list the few rules governing a good class design:
a class is a collection of related state and behavior
the behavior should use only the state and method parameters
if you think about the state as a relation (i.e. as the columns in a relational database table), the object ID (pointer) is the primary (synthetic) key and the state comprises the non-key attributes. Is the object in third normal form? If not, split it into two or more objects.
is the lifecycle of the object complete? In other words, do you have enough methods to take the object from creation through use and finally to destruction/disposal? If not, what methods (or states/transitions) are missing?
is all of the state used by at least one method? If not, does it provide descriptive information useful to a user of the object? If the answer to both of these is no, then get rid of the extraneous state.
if the problem you're trying to solve requires no state, you don't need an object.
On top of the SOLID principles, have a look at Code Smells. They were mentioned first (IIRC) in Martin Fowler's "Refactoring" book, which is an excellent read.
Code smells generally apply to OO and also procedural development to some degree, including things like "Shotgun Surgery" where edits are required all over the codebase to change one small thing, or "Switch Case Smell" where giant switch cases control the flow of your app.
The best thing about Refactoring (book) is that it recommends ways to fix code smells and takes a pragmatic view about them - they are just like real smells - you can live with some of them, but not with others.

Can Procedural Programming use Objects?

I have seen a number of different topics on StackOverFlow discussing the differences between Procedural and Object-Oriented Programming. The question is: If the program uses an object can it still be considered procedural?
Yes, and a lot of early Java was exactly that; you had a bunch of C programmers get into Java because it was "hot", people who didn't think in OOP. Lots of big classes with lots of static methods, lots of RTTI in case statements, lots of use of instanceof.
GLib has GObject which is object oriented programming implemented in pure C. While you can build up an API which begins to "feel" like OOP, it's still just plain "C" code with no actual classes (from the compiler's point of view). If you get far enough so you're starting to implement Object Oriented design patterns then I would call that OOP no matter what language it's written in. It's all about the feel of the code and how you have to think to write against it.
Procedural programming has to do with how you structure your program and model your domain. Just because at some point you instantiate an object, doesn't alone make your program oriented towards objects (i.e., object-oriented).
The distinction is entirely subjective. For example, if you code a C library using state passing, you are implementing something of a "tell" pattern, with the state as the object.
Classes can be considered as super types. When we converted from VB3 to VB6 our first pass was finding all the types we used, then finding all the subroutines and functions that took that type as a parameter. We moved those into the class definition, removed the parameter and then tested leaving the original flow of control intact
Then we refactored our flow of control to use various patterns and object oriented techniques.
The heart of object orientation is about how you decompose the problem into smaller parts, and how these parts work together. It's about the philosophy. Using OO language does not necessarily mean a program written in it is OO; it's just easier to do OO with a language that supports common OO concepts out of the box.
To answer the question: "If the program uses an object can it still be considered procedural?" - That depends on what your definitions of object and procedural programming are. But in my opinion, the answer is resounding "Yes". "Objects" are only a part of the philosophy that is OO and using them "somewhere in your application" does not mean you're doing OO.
The answer to your question is, yes. For example. I've got an old php legacy page to maintain. Most of the code is procedural but I decided that some things can be maintained much easier if I plug Zend Framework into the existing stuff and write some of my own classes to replace some of the old code. In general this application is still written and functioning in a mainly procedural way but here and then a class or another are instantiated and used. I guess there is no clear border between procedural and OO. You can do it cleaner or less clean. If you don't have enough layers for the size and complexity of your app you'll end up with more procedural code automatically too...

Why the claim that C# people don't get object-oriented programming? (vs class-oriented)

This caught my attention last night.
On the latest ALT.NET Podcast Scott Bellware discusses how as opposed to Ruby, languages like C#, Java et al. are not truly object oriented rather opting for the phrase "class-oriented". They talk about this distinction in very vague terms without going into much detail or discussing the pros and cons much.
What is the real difference here and how much does it matter? What are other languages then are "object-oriented"? It sounded pretty interesting but I don't want to have to learn Ruby just to know what if anything I am missing.
Update
After reading some of the answers below it seems like people generally agree that the reference is to duck-typing. What I'm not sure I understand still though is the claim that this ultimately changes all that much. Especially if you are already doing proper TDD with loose coupling etc. Can someone show me an example of a specific thing I could do with Ruby that I cannot do with C# and that exemplifies this different OOP approach?
In an object-oriented language, objects are defined by defining objects rather than classes, although classes can provide some useful templates for specific, cookie-cutter definitions of a given abstraction. In a class-oriented language, like C# for example, objects must be defined by classes, and these templates are usually canned and packaged and made immutable before runtime. This arbitrary constraint that objects must be defined before runtime and that the definitions of objects are immutable is not an object-oriented concept; it's class oriented.
The duck typing comments here are more attributing to the fact that Ruby and Python are more dynamic than C#. It doesn't really have anything to do with it's OO Nature.
What (I think) Bellware meant by that is that in Ruby, everything is an object. Even a class. A class definition is an instance of an object. As such, you can add/change/remove behavior to it at runtime.
Another good example is that NULL is an object as well. In ruby, everything is LITERALLY an object. Having such deep OO in it's entire being allows for some fun meta-programming techniques such as method_missing.
IMO, it's really overly defining "object-oriented", but what they are referring to is that Ruby, unlike C#, C++, Java, et al, does not make use of defining a class -- you really only ever work directly with objects. Conversely, in C# for example, you define classes that you then must instantiate into object by way of the new keyword. The key point being you must declare a class in C# or describe it. Additionally, in Ruby, everything -- even numbers, for example -- is an object. In contrast, C# still retains the concept of an object type and a value type. This in fact, I think illustrates the point they make about C# and other similar languages -- object type and value type imply a type system, meaning you have an entire system of describing types as opposed to just working with objects.
Conceptually, I think OO design is what provides the abstraction for use to deal complexity in software systems these days. The language is a tool use to implement an OO design -- some make it more natural than others. I would still argue that from a more common and broader definition, C# and the others are still object-oriented languages.
There are three pillars of OOP
Encapsulation
Inheritance
Polymorphism
If a language can do those three things it is a OOP language.
I am pretty sure the argument of language X does OOP better than language A will go on forever.
OO is sometimes defined as message oriented. The idea is that a method call (or property access) is really a message sent to another object. How the recieveing object handles the message is completely encapsulated. Often the message corresponds to a method which is then executed, but that is just an implementation detail. You can for example create a catch-all handler which is executed regardless of the method name in the message.
Static OO like in C# does not have this kind of encapsulation. A massage has to correspond to an existing method or property, otherwise the compiler will complain. Dynamic languages like Smalltalk, Ruby or Python does however support "message-based" OO.
So in this sense C# and other statically typed OO languages are not true OO, sine thay lack "true" encapsulation.
Update: Its the new wave.. which suggest everything that we've been doing till now is passe.. Seems to be propping up quite a bit in podcasts and books.. Maybe this is what you heard.
Till now we've been concerned with static classes and not unleashed the power of object oriented development. We've been doing 'class based dev.' Classes are fixed/static templates to create objects. All objects of a class are created equal.
e.g. Just to illustrate what I've been babbling about... let me borrow a Ruby code snippet from PragProg screencast I just had the privilege of watching.
'Prototype based development' blurs the line between objects and classes.. there is no difference.
animal = Object.new # create a new instance of base Object
def animal.number_of_feet=(feet) # adding new methods to an Object instance. What?
#number_of_feet = feet
end
def animal.number_of_feet
#number_of_feet
end
cat = animal.clone #inherits 'number_of_feet' behavior from animal
cat.number_of_feet = 4
felix = cat.clone #inherits state of '4' and behavior from cat
puts felix.number_of_feet # outputs 4
The idea being its a more powerful way to inherit state and behavior than traditional class based inheritance. It gives you more flexibility and control in certain "special" scenarios (that I've yet to fathom). This allows things like Mix-ins (re using behavior without class inheritance)..
By challenging the basic primitives of how we think about problems, 'true OOP' is like 'the Matrix' in a way... You keep going WTF in a loop. Like this one.. where the base class of Container can be either an Array or a Hash based on which side of 0.5 the random number generated is.
class Container < (rand < 0.5 ? Array : Hash)
end
Ruby, javascript and the new brigade seem to be the ones pioneering this. I'm still out on this one... reading up and trying to make sense of this new phenomenon. Seems to be powerful.. too powerful.. Useful? I need my eyes opened a bit more. Interesting times.. these.
I've only listened to the first 6-7 minutes of the podcast that sparked your question. If their intent is to say that C# isn't a purely object-oriented language, that's actually correct. Everything in C# isn't an object (at least the primitives aren't, though boxing creates an object containing the same value). In Ruby, everything is an object. Daren and Ben seem to have covered all the bases in their discussion of "duck-typing", so I won't repeat it.
Whether or not this difference (everything an object versus everything not an object) is material/significant is a question I can't readily answer because I don't have sufficient depth in Ruby to compare it to C#. Those of you who on here who know Smalltalk (I don't, though I wish I did) have probably been looking at the Ruby movement with some amusement since it was the first pure OO language 30 years ago.
Maybe they are alluding to the difference between duck typing and class hierarchies?
if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, just pretend it's a duck and kick it.
In C#, Java etc. the compiler fusses a lot about: Are you allowed to do this operation on that object?
Object Oriented vs. Class Oriented could therefore mean: Does the language worry about objects or classes?
For instance: In Python, to implement an iterable object, you only need to supply a method __iter__() that returns an object that has a method named next(). That's all there is to it: No interface implementation (there is no such thing). No subclassing. Just talking like a duck / iterator.
EDIT: This post was upvoted while I rewrote everything. Sorry, won't ever do that again. The original content included advice to learn as many languages as possible and to nary worry about what the language doctors think / say about a language.
That was an abstract-podcast indeed!
But I see what they're getting at - they just dazzled by Ruby Sparkle. Ruby allows you to do things that C-based and Java programmers wouldn't even think of + combinations of those things let you achieve undreamt of possibilities.
Adding new methods to a built-in String class coz you feel like it, passing around unnamed blocks of code for others to execute, mixins... Conventional folks are not used to objects changing too far from the class template.
Its a whole new world out there for sure..
As for the C# guys not being OO enough... dont take it to heart.. Just take it as the stuff you speak when you are flabbergasted for words. Ruby does that to most people.
If I had to recommend one language for people to learn in the current decade.. it would be Ruby. I'm glad I did.. Although some people may claim Python. But its like my opinion.. man! :D
I don't think this is specifically about duck typing. For instance C# supports limited duck-typing already - an example would be that you can use foreach on any class that implements MoveNext and Current.
The concept of duck-typing is compatible with statically typed languages like Java and C#, it's basically an extension of reflection.
This is really the case of static vs dynamic typing. Both are proper-OO, in as much as there is such a thing. Outside of academia it's really not worth debating.
Rubbish code can be written in either. Great code can be written in either. There's absolutely nothing functional that one model can do that the other can't.
The real difference is in the nature of the coding done. Static types reduce freedom, but the advantage is that everyone knows what they're dealing with. The opportunity to change instances on the fly is very powerful, but the cost is that it becomes hard to know what you're deaing with.
For instance for Java or C# intellisense is easy - the IDE can quickly produce a drop list of possibilities. For Javascript or Ruby this becomes a lot harder.
For certain things, for instance producing an API that someone else will code with, there is a real advantage in static typing. For others, for instance rapidly producing prototypes, the advantage goes to dynamic.
It's worth having an understanding of both in your skills toolbox, but nowhere near as important as understanding the one you already use in real depth.
Object Oriented is a concept. This concept is based upon certain ideas. The technical names of these ideas (actually rather principles that evolved over the time and have not been there from the first hour) have already been given above, I'm not going to repeat them. I'm rather explaining this as simple and non-technical as I can.
The idea of OO programming is that there are objects. Objects are small independent entities. These entities may have embedded information or they may not. If they have such information, only the entity itself can access it or change it. The entities communicate with each other by sending messages between each other. Compare this to human beings. Human beings are independent entities, having internal data stored in their brain and the interact with each other by communicating (e.g. talking to each other). If you need knowledge from someone's else brain, you cannot directly access it, you must ask him a question and he may answer that to you, telling you what you wanted to know.
And that's basically it. This is real idea behind OO programming. Writing these entities, define the communication between them and have them interact together to form an application. This concept is not bound to any language. It's just a concept and if you write your code in C#, Java, or Ruby, that is not important. With some extra work this concept can even be done in pure C, even though it is a functional language but it offers everything you need for the concept.
Different languages have now adopted this concept of OO programming and of course the concepts are not always equal. Some languages allow what other languages forbid, for example. Now one of the concepts that involved is the concept of classes. Some languages have classes, some don't. A class is a blueprint how an object looks like. It defines the internal data storage of an object, it defines the messages an object can understand and if there is inheritance (which is not mandatory for OO programming!), classes also defines from which other class (or classes if multiple inheritance is allowed) this class inherits (and which properties if selective inheritance exists). Once you created such a blueprint you can now generate an unlimited amount of objects build according to this blueprint.
There are OO languages that have no classes, though. How are objects then build? Well, usually dynamically. E.g. you can create a new blank object and then dynamically add internal structure like instance variables or methods (messages) to it. Or you can duplicate an already existing object, with all its properties and then modify it. Or possibly merge two objects into a new one. Unlike class based languages these languages are very dynamic, as you can generate objects dynamically during runtime in ways not even you the developer has thought about when starting writing the code.
Usually this dynamic has a price: The more dynamic a language is the more memory (RAM) objects will waste and the slower everything gets as program flow is extremely dynamically as well and it's hard for a compiler to generate effective code if it has no chance to predict code or data flow. JIT compilers can optimize some parts of that during runtime, once they know the program flow, however as these languages are so dynamically, program flow can change at any time, forcing the JIT to throw away all compilation results and re-compile the same code over and over again.
But this is a tiny implementation detail - it has nothing to do with the basic OO principle. It is nowhere said that objects need to be dynamic or must be alterable during runtime. The Wikipedia says it pretty well:
Programming techniques may include
features such as information hiding,
data abstraction, encapsulation,
modularity, polymorphism, and
inheritance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming
They may or they may not. This is all not mandatory. Mandatory is only the presence of objects and that they must have ways to interact with each other (otherwise objects would be pretty useless if they cannot interact with each other).
You asked: "Can someone show me an example of a wonderous thing I could do with ruby that I cannot do with c# and that exemplifies this different oop approach?"
One good example is active record, the ORM built into rails. The model classes are dynamically built at runtime, based on the database schema.
This is really probably getting down to what these people see others doing in c# and java as opposed to c# and java supporting OOP. Most languages cane be used in different programming paradigms. For example, you can write procedural code in c# and scheme, and you can do functional-style programming in java. It is more about what you are trying to do and what the language supports.
I'll take a stab at this.
Python and Ruby are duck-typed. To generate any maintainable code in these languages, you pretty much have to use test driven development. As such, it is very important for a developer to easily inject dependencies into their code without having to create a giant supporting framework.
Successful dependency-injection depends upon on having a pretty good object model. The two are sort of two sides of the same coin. If you really understand how to use OOP, then you should by default create designs where dependencies can be easily injected.
Because dependency injection is easier in dynamically typed languages, the Ruby/Python developers feel like their language understands the lessons of OO much better than other statically typed counterparts.