Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uwm.edu!uwvax!daffy!saavik.cs.wisc.edu!quale
From: quale@saavik.cs.wisc.edu (Douglas E. Quale)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Run-time Type Errors in Smalltalk
Message-ID: <1991May17.051840.26916@daffy.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 17 May 91 05:18:40 GMT
References: <1991May16.011804.21042@tkou02.enet.dec.com> <1991May16.153308.4054@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <1991May17.011209.29486@tkou02.enet.dec.com>
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Organization: University of Wisconsin -- Madison
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In article <1991May17.011209.29486@tkou02.enet.dec.com> diamond@jit533.enet@tkou02.enet.dec.com (Norman Diamond) writes:
>In article <1991May16.153308.4054@spool.cs.wisc.edu> quale@picard.cs.wisc.edu (Douglas E. Quale) writes:
>>In article <1991May16.011804.21042@tkou02.enet.dec.com> diamond@jit533.enet@tkou02.enet.dec.com (Norman Diamond) writes:
>>>[ugly C syntax to do programmer-computed dynamic typing of some X11 values]
>>I think there are reasons why the X Toolkit Intrinsics doesn't do this.
>>One of the design goals was binary compatibility with past versions.
>
>Uh, if you want binary compatibility between existing C code and a
>dynamically-typed language, you'll have a lot of problems.  When we

No, I mean binary compatibility between different C versions of the Toolkit.
Adding new types messes up the tags.  In C the type union approach is awkward
as the X Toolkit resources have a lot of different types.  Unfortunately I
don't have a complete list here, but it includes int, String *, WidgetList,
Function, Cardinal, AcceleratorTable, Pixel, Pixmap, Colormap, Boolean, Screen,
TranslationTable, Dimension, Callback, Position, Visual, Atom, Widget,
InitialState, Window, CallbackList, Cursor, FontStruct*, Justify, ShapeStyle,
Orientation, float, BackingStore, TextPosition, TextResizeMode, TextScrollMode,
TextSelectType*, EditType, AsciiType, and WrapMode.  My apologies to anyone
I've inadvertantly overlooked, and I hope I didn't repeat any types.  These
are only the types of the resources for the Athena widgets, the Motif widget
resources have a *lot* more types, and it must be possible for any widget
writer to add still more.

>
>>Dynamically typed languages are safer than primitive statically typed
>>languages such as C.
>
>No.  Dynamically typed languages are safer than C.  Statically typed
      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I believe that's what I said.

-- Doug Quale
quale@saavik.cs.wisc.edu

Primitive statically typed languages are languages that practically force the
programmer to use an unchecked simulation of dynamic typing.  For a start
they generally lack polymorphism, and frequently have little support for
generics at all.  Sadly, a vast majority of the programs written in static
languages are in languages that have very primitive type systems.