Duck Typing
Duck typing is a programming concept where an object's suitability for a particular operation is determined by the presence of certain methods or properties, rather than its explicit type or class inheritance. It emphasizes behavior over type, often summarized by the phrase 'if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.' This approach is commonly used in dynamically-typed languages like Python, Ruby, and JavaScript to enable flexible and polymorphic code.
Developers should learn duck typing when working in dynamically-typed languages to write more generic and reusable code that focuses on what objects can do rather than what they are. It's particularly useful for creating flexible APIs, implementing design patterns like strategy or adapter, and handling diverse data structures in a uniform way, such as iterating over collections regardless of their specific type.