Re: Introducing PlayDB (The Model, The Language, The DBMS)

Originally posted by Christopher Browne

> In an attempt to throw the authorities off his trail,
> seunosewa_at_inaira.com (Seun Osewa) transmitted:

> > "Bob Badour" <bbadour_at_golden.net> wrote:

> > SELF is a classless programming Language, claims to be object
> oriented

> > http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_computer_language"]htt-
> p://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_computer_language[/url]

> > http://research.sun.com/self/language.html"]http://resear-
> ch.sun.com/self/language.html[/url]

> > http://research.sun.com/research/self/release_4.0/Self-
> ndex.html"]http://research.sun.com/research/self/release_4.0/Self-
> 4.0/Tutorial/index.html[/url]

> > A lot of ideas about making a typeless Object-Oriented database
> system

> > workable would be learned. i am on it.

>

> SELF isn't "typeless;" the only language I recall that _claimed_ to be

> such was BCPL (predecessor to B and C), and even there, that wasn't

class="quotelev1">> honestly typeless; it was instead pretty "loose" about them.

>

> Perl and TCL both have a history of pretending "typelessness;" their

> scalars can be coerced into pretending that they are strings or

> numbers depending on what operation you use on them. Mind you, since

> they have aggregate 'types' it's again not honest to call them

> "typeless;" they are more 'schizophrenic about types.' (Which is

> sometimes a big pain.)

>

> What could be of _some_ merit would be to have a system that is 'type

> agnostic;' that is, you have containers/slots in which you can put any

> type. That's sort of what Self does; that's _certainly_

> characteristic of the Lisp family. The latter is strongly typed, but

> common data structures allow plunking in data of any type, in contrast

> with (say) ML.

>

> Whether or not this is any good for databases is another
> question. The

> _problem_ with being open to a "loose" set of types is that there then

> needs to be code to interpret the different types.

> --

> If this was helpful, http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=cbbrowne"]-
> <http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=cbbrowne>[/url] rate me

> http://cbbrowne.com/info/unix.html"]http://cbbrowne.com/info/un-
> ix.html[/url]

> Signs of a Klingon Programmer - 16. "Klingon programs don't do

> accountancy. For that, you need a Ferengi."

PickBasic treats everything as a string - except that in some contexts strings are treated as numerics. Apart from that it's "type-less".

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