Re: Strong Typing, Dynamic Languages, What to do?

[Matthias Felleisen <matthias@ccs.neu.edu>]

Jerzy, 

with all due respect, I think Noel was on to the right answer.

And why does SML's performance suck, if static types are really all that
great for performance? Once you have polymorphism you don't need dynamic 
types to mess up your performance. 

I won't ask the same question about Haskell. :-) 

;; --- 

You also write: 

   PS. Actually, I would love to have a Scheme implementation with internals
   (say, "keywords" style #*car#, #*plus_int#, etc.) which omit all the checks, and
   brutally explode if used illegally, but VERY fast, and usable in a context
   where the type checking has been done by some plugged-in module.

and I must say that 

   For people who *seriously* pose themselves the question ...

they know that Chez Scheme has all of that and runs at a pretty good speed
for the average program. If you turn of the safety checks, you get better
performance than SML/NJ. I know that this doesn't mean much (see above) but
it answers your question to some extent. 

-- Matthias