RE: [Axiom-developer] B#

[Bill Page]

On November 20, 2005 2:47 PM Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
> 
> "Bill Page" <address@hidden> writes:
> [...]
> | I wonder if your colleague who said: "strong typing is for the
> | weak of minds" really knows what "types" in computer programming
> | really are?
> 
> well, if Pascal has a strong type system, then I can't see how I
> can disagree :-/
> 

Perhaps you said this only as humour? But I am curious since it is
not clear to me who you are not disagreeing with ... ?

Pascal was the first strongly typed language that I learned. I wrote
what I thought was a fairly substantial medical application in UCSD
Pascal on an Apple II microcomputer. I believe that the type system
really did contribute to more reliable software development. From a
historical perspective it is interesting to speculate why Pascal did
not survive. I think perhaps it was because in the end it's type
system was not quite flexible enough (compared say to Haskell). As a
result C, with almost not type system dominated (and still dominates)
most application development.

Regards,
Bill Page.