In this recent post to DZone.com Giorgio Sironi looks at duck typing and compares it in a few different languages (PHP, Ruby and Java). "Duck typing" is where the methods/functions define the structure or common interface rather than being functional.

What follows is my experience with Java, PHP and Ruby. I mainly use PHP as a dynamic language that supports duck typing but also the definition of Java-like interfaces, but does not force any of the two approaches as you can define interfaces whose method arguments accept any variable or not using interfaces at all. Is duck typing that a revolution?

He shares some of the common misconceptions he's seen including the idea that duck typing can help completely different objects work together and that, sometimes, despite naming conventions, functionality was intended to be different. He shows how even interfaces in PHP can be implemented loosely and the "acts as" and "single callback" architecture ideas.