RE: dynamic vs. static typing

["Anton van Straaten" <address@hidden>]

Ken Shan wrote:
> On 2003-11-19T10:58:56-0500, John Clements wrote:
> > As a junior member of camp 4, I must respectfully take issue with the
> > blanket condemnation of heterogeneous lists... unless we agree to say
> > that from a type standpoint, Scheme is unityped.  Agreed?
>
> Oh yeah, Scheme values (unlike objects that don't even support
> introspection) support a very rich interface, and every Scheme value
> supports the same interface.  I was condemning "truly heterogeneous"
> lists, if you will, where the consumer of the list has absolutely no
> idea what the elements are.

Of course, it's hardly necessary to condemn these, since they don't usefully
exist in practice, even in DT systems.

And as soon as you grant the ability to rely on the presence of some common
interface, such as Scheme's values or Object or e.g. COM's IUnknown, ST and
DT systems can both have the same capabilities, determined by what that
common interface allows you to find out about, or do with, the objects in
question.

Anton