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From: quale@saavik.cs.wisc.edu (Douglas E. Quale)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Run-time Type Errors in Smalltalk
Message-ID: <1991May21.160343.11704@daffy.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 21 May 91 16:03:43 GMT
References: <1991May17.011209.29486@tkou02.enet.dec.com> <1991May17.051840.26916@daffy.cs.wisc.edu> <1991May20.005238.19244@tkou02.enet.dec.com>
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Organization: University of Wisconsin -- Madison
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In article <1991May20.005238.19244@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:
>>>>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.
>
>It isn't.  Your previous statement confused statically typed languages
>with C.  Your example only proved that dynamically typed languages are
>safer than one particular collection of C programs.  You didn't even
>prove that dynamically typed languages are safer than C in general,
>but I made this generalization intuitively.
>
>You play word games in order to create the assertion that dynamically
>typed languages are safer than statically typed languages.  If you have
>a shred of evidence to support this assertion, it is better to show
>your evidence than to play word games.
>--

No.  I don't confuse statically typed languages with C.  I may confuse C
with a primitive statically typed language, but I don't think that's a
confusion.

Dynamically typed languages are safer than primitive statically typed
languages such as C, exactly as I said.  I should rather have said languages
with primitive static typing, but my original statement is close enough.

In primitive static typing systems type safety is thrown out the window to
provide genericity.  You can disagree with me, but this is not a word game.

SML has a much better type system than C, but I'm not certain how convenient
it would be for writing X programs.

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