Smalltalk = strongly typed?

lex at cc.gatech.edu lex at cc.gatech.edu
Mon Oct 18 07:32:44 UTC 2004


Blake <blake at kingdomrpg.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 16:24:35 -0400, <lex at cc.gatech.edu> wrote:
> 
> > PS -- and why check it all statically, anyway?  It makes perfect sense
> > to investigate type checks that happen at runtime, like Common Lisp
> > does.
> 
> How about: Why not? If it helps prevent bugs before they happen, that's a  
> good thing. If it can provide a degree of safety--well, okay, I guess the  
> formula is "degree of safety > inconvenience & other bad stuff".

Agreed, though of course that's just the beginning of the discussion
about the details of the checker.  The details matter a lot for the
three variables you mention.

My point was to emphasize the *statically* part.  Dynamic type checking
can also do all of the things you describe, and in general it can
support more types.  For example, it's trivial to have a dynamic type
like "an integer greater than 17", but it's cutting edge to do this in a
static type system.

Lex



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