Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!decwrl!pa.dec.com!wall
From: wall@pa.dec.com (David Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Dynamic typing (part 31,497)
Message-ID: <1991Apr24.212350.27855@pa.dec.com>
Date: 24 Apr 91 21:23:50 GMT
References: <2397@optima.cs.arizona.edu>
Sender: news@pa.dec.com (News)
Organization: DEC Palo Alto
Lines: 20

David Gudeman writes, of the claim that static typing leads to less
complexity:
    That doesn't make any sense.  How can it lead to less complexity and
    fewer bugs when the implementer has to explicitely handle details
    instead of letting them be handled by the language?  Does it lead to
    less complexity and fewer bugs when implementers handle array bounds
    checking without language help?  What about checking for dereferencing
    a null pointer?  Whenever you leave such things up to the implementer
    you are providing opportunities for careless bugs.

Since when does static typing preclude runtime checks?  Ever hear of
Pascal?  Or Modula-2?

The Modula-2 I use checks for range errors, following nil pointers,
even following bad but non-nil pointers.

Moreover, the optimizer is good enough to get rid of most of these
checks, when they are provably redundant.

David W. Wall - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - < wall@decwrl.dec.com >