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From: diamond@jit345.swstokyo.dec.com (Norman Diamond)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.object
Subject: Re: Type Systems and Dynamic Binding
Message-ID: <1991Apr18.041621.20077@tkou02.enet.dec.com>
Date: 18 Apr 91 04:16:21 GMT
References: <3843@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP> <27313:Apr1623:30:0391@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <1991Apr16.183750@ece.arizona.edu> <1991Apr17.173651.23103@visix.com>
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Reply-To: diamond@jit345.enet@tkou02.enet.dec.com (Norman Diamond)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Japan , Tokyo
Lines: 22

In article <1991Apr17.173651.23103@visix.com> amanda@visix.com (Amanda Walker) writes:
>In article <1991Apr16.183750@ece.arizona.edu> dan@ece.arizona.edu (Dan
>Filiberti) writes:
>   And, no matter how much you insist, C DOES NOT SUPPORT DYNAMIC
>   TYPING.  Period.
>Lisp supports dynamic typing.  Lisp can be interpreted by, or
>translated into, C.  Therefore, C supports dynamic typing.  QED.
>Now, you can argue that the C language does not *include* dynamic
>typing.  I don't think anyone here would disagree with you there.
>However, you can certainly *implement* dynamic typing in C, with as
>low an overhead as you can get in any other language.

I hope we're not going to repeat the metalinguistic argument over
the meaning of the word "support."  An electric power cable can be
used as a tool by a programmer to write code to support dynamic typing.
(I'm using several such cables to write a Usenet article too.)
But the programmer is writing the code to do the support.  The
cable itself does not do the support.  A pencil does not support
software design the way some CAD products do.
--
Norman Diamond       diamond@tkov50.enet.dec.com
If this were the company's opinion, I wouldn't be allowed to post it.