Re: another take on hackers and painters

[address@hidden]

> Clerical programmers [...] will not know what to do with the freedom
> given by things such as dynamic typing.

Ok, so I'm none too bright.  What exact freedoms do you get with dynamic
typing?  It seems like a type problem is going to result in a broken
program either way, so you still have to think about types and making
sure the right collection of stuff gets put in the right place.  The
only real advantages I can see are:

* A dynamic type system makes the language implementation easier.
Writing a decent static type checker is harder than a decent dynamic
type checker.

* Macros:  I know staticly typed macro-ish systems exist, but with the
execption of camlp4, I don't know of any that are a standard part of a
language or even a standard part of an implementation.  Again, dynamic
typing makes it easier, better integrated, and thus more common.


Tommy McGuire