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From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Generecity and static/dynamic typing
Message-ID: <6703:Mar1812:01:2791@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 18 Mar 91 12:01:27 GMT
References: <595@optima.cs.arizona.edu> <2840@enea.se>
Organization: IR
Lines: 21

In article <2840@enea.se> sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
> OK, I cannot write a polymorphic list handler in Ada or Eiffel
> easily without a lot of extra code. On the other hand, in the
> general case you have to do that for a dynamicly typed language
> as well.

Huh? Your argument for this seems to be ``Sorting a polymorphic list
doesn't make sense unless comparison is defined between arbitrary list
elements''---which is obviously true but doesn't justify your point.

My response to Dave is ``So what''? Polymorphic lists do not appear to
be particularly useful in the vast majority of real-world programs. When
they are necessary, they are easy enough to implement provided that the
language has good enough syntax and a few semantic features.

Emacs is written in C, with a very small percentage of ``helper'' code.
Until someone can explain how a dynamically typed language would remove
any length from Emacs other than in the helper code, I don't see why we
should accept claims of extra productivity or conciseness.

---Dan