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From: emjej@uokvax.UUCP.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang.st80
Subject: Re: Typed Smalltalk
Message-ID: <13300002@uokvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Jul-86 15:31:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: uokvax.13300002
Posted: Tue Jul 15 15:31:00 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Jul-86 02:03:06 EDT
References: <799@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
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Nf-From: uokvax.UUCP!emjej    Jul 15 14:31:00 1986


Josh Susser says...

>I have also found that one of Smalltalk's stongest points is its
>polymorphic nature.  Smalltalk's numeric system and collection classes
>are two of the best examples of the power and flexibility that an
>untyped polymorphic language can give you.  When I write a numeric
>algorithm in Smalltalk, it is useful for all kinds of numbers -
>SmallInteger, LargeInteger, Float, Fraction, Complex, Matrix, or any
>other kind of number I care to write - and I just don't care what type
>of number somebody may pass to my method.

Agreed, wholeheartedly!  This is, however, a property independent of
OOPS (and I will say nothing further, for fear of restarting pointless
flamage).  For example, the programming language Russell is strongly
typed, but lets one write, for example, a single quicksort procedure
that not only sorts things of any type for which there is a comparison
operator, but also doesn't care how arrays are implemented underneath.
(Maybe not of much use for quicksort, but it's nice to have, say,
Gaussian elimination routines that don't have to be rewritten for band,
sparse, polka-dotted, etc. matrices.)

						James Jones