🚀 go-pugleaf

Darren New writes:
>Well, heck, cowboy.  Of course type is a form of information.  But is
>it information only the compiler has, or is it information that comes
>into play at run-time.  The question is essentially whether variables
>have types or not. If not, then you have dynamic typing.  If so, then
>you have static typing, because each particular reference (variable,
>expression, etc) has a known type at compile time.

Variables have types when I assign them values.  That information is
carried explicitly in interpreted code, and implicitly in compiled
code.  I don't have to variable declare types for the compiler any
more than I have to declare the types of intermediate results.

Of course, for ill-conditioned cases, the compiler generates lousy
code.  The simple solution is don't write bad code.

>When you say something is a homogenous collection, you seem to be
>saying that every element is a <type,value> pair and hence is all the
>same type. Naturally in a dynamically typed system, the types have to
>be carried along with the values in some way.  

Did I say that?  hmm...

If I have a bitmap, that's a homogenous collection, and I sure don't
carry type information along with each bit.

On the other hand, if for some reason I wanted a collection of bitmaps
and strings, I'd have a list of pointers to data descriptors.  One
pointer (and descriptor) for each element of the list.  Those data
descriptors would carry "type" [and size], etc.  But I deal with a
homogenous collection: a list of pointers.

Personally, if I have bitmaps and strings, I'd prefer to refer to them
by separate names (that is, store them in separate variables).  And as
a general rule, this runs faster (than using indirection).

Raul Rockwell