Re: the forward method [dynamic vs. static typing]

[Pascal Costanza <address@hidden>]

Peter van Rooijen wrote:

> From: "Pascal Costanza" <costanza@iai.uni-bonn.de>
> 
>>Peter van Rooijen wrote:
>>
>>>Based on this I started to wonder, "what exactly is the goal of a type
>>>system?" and quickly googled for "goal of a type system" and found an
>>>interesting variety of insights, and on "goals of a type system" and found
>>>what I quote below in :
>>
>>[...]
>>
>>There's something wrong with the wording of that question IMHO.
> 
> I don't understand. Are you saying that I should not be interested in the
> goals of type systems?

No, of course not.

> I think that the goals of type systems are very interesting to know about.

Yes, of course.

What irritates me is that the various proposed benefits of static typing 
are so disparate that I cannot imagine that they were all _intended_ to 
be covered by a single piece of technology at the same time.

>>It's not that some people sat together, wrote up some requirements for
>>something they later called "type system", and then tried hard to
>>implement these requirements.
>>
>>It's more that it's somewhat natural to implement static checking in
>>certain ways, and that people later realized that this can have certain
>>benefits.
> 
> I don't buy that. If they didn't think there would be benefits, they
> wouldn't have taken the trouble to implement them in the first place. I can
> see that they may have discovered unanticipated benefits in certain
> implementations, and those are relevant too, of course.
> 
> Let me know if I misunderstood your point.

I hope it's clearer by now. I am not sure whether I am getting at 
something here, and I would be interested to hear other opinions.


Pascal

-- 
Pascal Costanza               University of Bonn
mailto:costanza@web.de        Institute of Computer Science III
http://www.pascalcostanza.de  Römerstr. 164, D-53117 Bonn (Germany)