[squeak-dev] looking for papers/anecdotes/slide-decks on variable typing vs value typing

Philippe Marschall philippe.marschall at gmail.com
Fri Apr 10 14:17:43 UTC 2009


2009/4/10 Ralph Johnson <johnson at cs.uiuc.edu>:
>> A very interesting article that anyone interested in the topic must
>> read: "What To Know Before Debating Type Systems"
>> http://www.pphsg.org/cdsmith/types.html
>
> i disagree that "strong typing" doesn't mean anything.  Weak typing
> means "has a type system but it is easy to get around it".  Strong
> typing means "has a type system and you can't get around it easily".
> Strong typing certainly does NOT mean compile-time typing.
>
> I agree that "dynamic" (checked at run-time) vs. "static" (checked at
> compile-time) is what is important.  C and Fortran have weak static
> type systems.  Java has a strong static type system, but only because
> casts are checked at run-time, i.e. the static type system has holes
> in it but the run-time system patches those holes.  Smalltalk has a
> strong dynamic type system; there is no way to run a method on an
> object that it doesn't belong to.

#valueWithReceiver:arguments:?

Cheers
Philippe



More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list