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Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Dynamic typing (part 3)
Message-ID: <895@optima.cs.arizona.edu>
From: gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman)
Date: 20 Mar 91 08:22:04 GMT
Sender: news@cs.arizona.edu
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In article  <3352:Mar1803:04:5491@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> Dan Bernstein writes:
]In article <693@optima.cs.arizona.edu> gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman) writes:
]> Programs in
]> dynamically typed languages are generally half to a tenth the size of
]> programs in statically typed languages that do the same thing.
]
]I don't believe you. Give an example.

One example would convince you?  Say, I've got this real estate I'm
trying to unload...

No, I'm not willing to go to the work to dig up (or generate)
examples.  Sorry.  I've seen examples, and those numbers are thrown
around quite a lot, and they agree with my experience, but I'm not
willing to work that hard just to win an argument (I may like to argue
but I don't really care if I win or not...).

You can probably find some examples of your own though.  Try comparing
the sizes of various GNU Emacs elisp packages with C programs that do
the same thing.  There are also articles scattered around the
programming languages literature that make these sorts of comparisons.

You will probably have to look back 10 years or more, since these days
the advocates of dynamic typing tend to feel that the size advantage
is so obvious it doesn't have to be proven any more.  Now they are
trying to prove it can be made as efficient as static typing (and I
don't think they will succeed).
--
					David Gudeman
gudeman@cs.arizona.edu
noao!arizona!gudeman