Re: dynamic vs. static typing

[Steve Dekorte <address@hidden>]

On Nov 24, 2003, at 11:48 PM, Anton van Straaten wrote:
> I'm reminded of the argument about wearing helmets on a bicycle or
> motorcycle: head injuries actually aren't that high a proportion of the
> injuries that occur during accidents, so why wear a helmet?

Because the type of accident is worse (broken skulls are less desirable 
than broken arms). In the case of programming, I don't see how it's any 
worse to raise a "does not respond" error than to produce the wrong 
result.

> Anyone who's made serious use of a language with a good static 
> typesystem
> has experienced this.  Think of it as a way to get an entire class of
> high-performance unit tests without having to actually write them.

What class is that? If we are already testing for correctness of 
results, shouldn't that expose any "does not respond" errors of 
interest?

-- Steve