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From: sakkinen@tukki.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.functional
Subject: Re: What is strong typing? (Was: I like strong typing)
Message-ID: <1990Aug17.124142.9332@tukki.jyu.fi>
Date: 8 Aug 90 06:34:20 GMT
References: <3263@stl.stc.co.uk> <5450@castle.ed.ac.uk> <3283@stl.stc.co.uk>
Reply-To: sakkinen@jytko.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen)
Organization: University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
Lines: 38

Note2: Third trial to post!
Note1: This is the second posting of an article that apparently
disappeared while the news software was out of order here
for three days. Sorry if somebody receives it twice.

In article <3283@stl.stc.co.uk> "Tom Thomson" <tom@stl.stc.co.uk> writes
(rather as a side issue in the posting):
> ...

>Even if I restrict myself to compile-time type checking, there doesn't
>appear to be any reason to restrict myself to type checking which is 
>guaranteed to terminate (since I can probably write programs which won't
>terminate at run time, why should I insist they terminate at compile time?)
> ...

Run-time termination (i.e. the termination of _your_ programme)
and compile-time termination (i.e. the termination of the _compiler_
you use) are two totally independent things. Well, not totally:
if the compilation never terminates, there will never _be_ an
executable form of your programme to run.

I estimate that 99.99999% of all programmers would consider
a compiler badly broken if it did not terminate, or even if its
time requirement seemed exponential w.r.t. source code size.
And very few programmers would accept to use a _language_ for which
it is impossible to build a terminating compiler; even though
many programmers today seem to delight in horrible languages like C.

(I am a complete outsider in this group. Perhaps non-imperative
programmers have more patience than we others.)

Markku Sakkinen
Department of Computer Science
University of Jyvaskyla (a's with umlauts)
Seminaarinkatu 15
SF-40100 Jyvaskyla (umlauts again)
Finland
          SAKKINEN@FINJYU.bitnet (alternative network address)