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From: kurt@fluke.UUCP (Kurt Guntheroth)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Anti-CLU... Anti-Strong-Typing...
Message-ID: <817@vax2.fluke.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 29-Nov-83 20:43:45 EST
Article-I.D.: vax2.817
Posted: Tue Nov 29 20:43:45 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Dec-83 06:41:58 EST
References: <816@vax2.fluke.UUCP>
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Everett, Wash
Lines: 37

Anti-strong typing?  Flame city!

I agree with Mr Bhaskar that often it is necessary for the value to carry
type information since languages which attempt to do all type checking in
the compiler are inherently limited in power.  We disagree over whether
languages like Snobol (where nearly any type may be coerced into another
with no warning from the language) are good examples of the usefulness of
typed values.

People who don't like strongly typed languages often are rebelling against
the amount of typing they impose to insure that type checking can be done.
I am sympathetic, but I am also strongly reminded of C.A.R Hoare's comment
in a recent Turing Lecture which reads approximately  "Wouldn't it be
wonderful if your Fairy Godmother would wave her magic wand over your program 
and make it correct, and all you had to do was type it in three times?"

Strong typing is a price you pay to have the compiler detect some of your
programming errors.  Obviously if one never made a single programming error
strong typing would be unnecessary...

Strong typing as a concept is inescapable.  Strong typing is a language's
ability to tell two things of dissimilar kind apart and without it a
language is braindamaged.  Strong typing as implemented in Pascal or Snobol
is not optimal.  Maybe lisp?  Maybe smalltalk?  You don't think they are
strongly typed languages?  Think again.

By the way, a pet peeve of mine is languages which are ugly to support
compilation in a single pass through the input.  When I write a program I
make several passes, why shouldn't my compiler.  Makes the language more
concise and removes much of the garbage surrounding strong typing in a
language like Ada.  Oh well...

-- 
Kurt Guntheroth
John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc.
{uw-beaver,decvax!microsof,ucbvax!lbl-csam,allegra,ssc-vax}!fluke!kurt