cheerful static typing (was: Any and Every... (was: Eval))

[Shriram Krishnamurthi <address@hidden>]

[About "cheerful" type checkers -- what a great name!]

Extensive work along these lines happened at Rice University in the
90s, and continues in the hands of the Rice diaspora today.  They
called it "soft typing".  Please see the theses by Mike Fagan, Andrew
Wright and Cormac Flanagan at

  http://www.cs.rice.edu/CS/PLT/Publications/

The theory to support this is trickier than one might initially
suppose, but it's far from impossible -- indeed, both Wright and
Flanagan produced pretty practical systems along these lines.  Findler
at Rice and Meunier and Steckler at Northeastern are taking this
further in different, and interesting, directions.  Cartwright at Rice
is also continuing to look at these topics.

Shriram