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From: lavinus@csgrad.cs.vt.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.object
Subject: Re: blip too. [Re: Dynamic typing -- To Have and Have Not ...]
Message-ID: <1052@creatures.cs.vt.edu>
Date: 21 Mar 91 17:05:17 GMT
References: <1991Mar16.052952.10201@cs.cmu.edu> <3523:Mar1803:21:0591@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <22032@yunexus.YorkU.CA> <11820:Mar1923:59:3591@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <22075@yunexus.YorkU.CA>
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Hello, Type warriors...

I was meaning to stay out of this, but alas...

Do people out there really think that any one language is good for all applications?
Obviously, if you want to write a UN*X device driver, you do it in C, and if you want
to do heavy number crunching, you do it in Fortran (for speed), or better yet, in
Occam or something on a multiprocessor.  There are some applications for which dynamic
typing makes programming infinitely easier, and there are some for which dynamic
typing gains you little, and thus is not worth the efficiency hit (which is often
minor - compare programs written in C and Yale's T dialect of Lisp/Scheme sometime).
Aside from all that, expressiveness is more a matter of taste than anything else - 
some people just naturally think in one paradigm or another.  The arguments are thus
rendered rather pointless - it's not as though when this argument is won, we're
going to remove from existence all languages which belong to the losing side (that's
assuming the argument *can* be won).  It all comes down to something like, "Oh yeah,
well my Scheme compiler can beat up your C compiler..." :-)

Ah well, on with the flames...

Joe
--
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                                                   _  _  __
  Joseph W. Lavinus (lavinus@csgrad.cs.vt.edu)     | / \ |_
  Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia            __| \_/ |_