🚀 go-pugleaf

Victor Yodaiken    >
Me                 >>
>>static language implentations have an efficiency advantage (as they
>>better model things like machine limits) while dynamic language
>>implementations have an efficiency advantage (they better model
>>human thought mechanisms as exemplified by thousands of years of
>>mathematical development).
>People keep saying this, but it just ain't so. Type declarations are
>an integral part of mathematics. Abbreviations and conventions, which
>make declarations implicit are used extensively, but that's not the
>same as no type declarations.

Did I say no type declarations?  I said dynamic typing.

The advantage of dynamic typing is not "no type declarations", the
advantage is that redundant type declarations can be eliminated.
[Actually, this property is not unique to dynamically typed languages.
But DTLs are more consistent in this regard than are STLs.]

For example, if F(x) is defined as G(h(q(x))), and the domain of q is
balogna sandwiches, then the domain of F is balogna sandwiches, and
x can only take on values that are balogna sandwiches.  Using q in
this manner is sufficient to declare the type of F.

Another advantage of dynamic typing is that you get a defined behavior
when a function gets a value which is out of its domain (e.g. divide
by zero, or array index with index too large).  Again, this is not
unique to DTLs -- and again, DTLs are more consistent about this than
STLs.

Raul Rockwell