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

[Oscar Fuentes <ofv@wanadoo.es>]

Shriram Krishnamurthi <sk@cs.brown.edu> writes:

> Oscar Fuentes wrote:
> 
> > > Anyway, I don't think I or anyone else here is saying anything you
> > > don't know.
> > 
> > I was expecting to hear something I don't know.
> 
> Depends on how much listening you're doing (-:.

I try to listen. Possibly the fact that I agree with lots of the
arguments made by others is an indication that I listening :-)

> Have you studied TIL?

What is "TIL"?
 
> > Systematically, the claims made about C++ from the lispy field sound
> > as disinformed on the ears of C++ programmers (a kind of "they don't
> > understand us. They say this is bad when in fact we know about it and
> > made a conscious decission of living with it") 
> 
> What matters is not how they sound but how informed they are.

so you are throwing the ball back to their roof...

> I daresay very few people on this list have not been subjected to
> the tyranny of C/C++/Pascal/....  A good many of us spent several
> years in the wilderness before we found functional programming /
> safe languages / garbage collection / etc.  So of course we
> understand C++ programmers.  We just got tired of living that way.
> It seems like wishful thinking on the part of the C++ community to
> not stop and ponder this point.

The first thinking that comes to my mind is the reply I get from some
of my C++ colleagues whenever I encourage them to learn Scheme: "Isn't
that like Lisp? I was forced to learn Lisp on my student days and I
hate Lisp! It sucks!"

Well, Scheme is not Lisp. Being forced to learn or use anything is not
a good receipt to appreciate it. And finally, holding emotive
reactions towards technical issues is not the best way to rise
objetive, scientific judgements.

The only part of the above paragraph that possibly needs a
clarification is that the C++ you experienced a few years ago is no
longer the current C++. Possibly the C++ that 80% of the C++
programmers use _now_ is not modern C++. This does not mean that you
necessarily would love modern C++ but it explains why some of the
claims from outside sounds bizarre to the C++ people.

For example, I have tens of thousands of lines of C++ addressing quite
complex problems that _never_ leaked _any_ _resource_ (not only
memory). Moreover, I have never bothered about explicitly
de-allocating any resource. And it gave me significantly _less_ work
than the traditional allocate/deallocate way.

(And a malicious thought I've just had: what says the haskellites
about Scheme as a functional programming language? }:-) Well, really,
if a haskellite comes to me saying that Scheme is not a functional
programming language and it has less merit because of that I would
agree with his first statement and disagree with the later.

-- 
Oscar