andres

there is a difference between a type system and a typed-language.
The type system does not have to specify the language semantics. A type 
system
is just a set of rules that extract information from source or 
execution.

Now what we learned is that:
	type system are good to support understanding
	typed languages gets in your way

but you can have a type system to help annotating your dynamically 
typed language.
There is no anatgonism. This is just that we should be clear on what we 
want to get.
For me I would like to get something that tell me:
	this argument receives the messages of TSortable

Stef

On 17 oct. 04, at 07:33, Andres Valloud wrote:

> Hello Andreas,
>
> Saturday, October 16, 2004, 2:50:22 PM, you wrote:
>
> AR> I respect your opinions but please don't put things into my mouth 
> that I
> AR> haven't said or meant.
>
> I did not put words in your mouth.  I expressed what I understood you
> meant.  I'd like to know how I didn't get what you wrote.
>
>>> From another point of view: Smalltalk's point was to teach kids, and
>>> it seems to me it was important to make it late bound.  Therefore I
>>> don't expect kids to understand the far reaching consequences of the
>>> static type system you propose.
> AR> But you are aware that eToys do have a static type system, are
> AR> you? It seems as if kids don't have that many problems with static
> AR> type systems as you are claiming.
>
> There was no eToys back in the 70s.  I thought the point of Smalltalk
> was to let kids write Smalltalk code.
>
> While I am not familiar with the static type system in eToys, I am not
> seeing how a static type system in eToys would be similar at all with
> a static type system for Smalltalk code either.
>
> Andres.
>
>