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

[Shriram Krishnamurthi <sk@cs.brown.edu>]

Anton van Straaten wrote:

> Is this primarily an academic objection - i.e. no-one can reason
> formally about these type systems - or a practical one, i.e. it
> somehow complicates programming without providing sufficient benefit
> in return?  Or equal measures of both (perhaps the former implies
> the latter)?

A type system is not much more useful than a user's ability to reason
about its output.  A complicated type system can reach the point of
being counterproductive.

> If it's primarily an academic issue, I'd argue that's not
> necessarily a bad thing, since actual use of language features
> regularly gets ahead of formal understanding of those features.

No shit.  See Perl.

> > Your parenthetical phrase ("depending on the compiler") 
> > points to one of the problems.
>
> That's a function of standards and available implementations,
> presumably, which doesn't detract from the concept of optional
> static typing.

You don't understand my point.  In languages like Curl, the "type
system" is basically defined by what one particular compiler does.

Shriram