Re: [Axiom-developer] B#

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

"Bill Page" <address@hidden> writes:

| 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 ... ?

Partly as humour, and partly seriously.  I don't think strong typing is
a goal in itself; I have had lot of experience with good type systems
helping me catching silly errors early in program development, and
alleged "strong type systems" getting in my way.

| Pascal was the first strongly typed language that I learned. I wrote

I started with BASIC and Pascal was my second programming language,
the more serious I programmed with (and I did not have much choice
given the French educational system at the time).

| 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'm not sure we have much to speculate about, given the facts.  I can
only speak for myself and I would refrain from generalization; but
Pascal's "strong type system" did not help me.  I got far more
positive experience later with (O)Caml and C++ (and even Scheme!).  I
don't believe it is a matter of dynamism vs. non-dynamism.  For me, it
is a matter of what I can express and how I can express it.  

| 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.

C has a type system -- serious C programmers know how to use it.  Yes,
it does not get anal-retentive about it where it should.  And that is
a pity.  Notice that Pascal and C started almost at the same time...

-- Gaby