Re: The IDS, the EDS and the DBMS

"Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message news:Ess0d.18407$MQ5.89_at_attbi_s52...

> There are two camps in the typing wars, and they don't get
> along much. :-) But I'm decidedly a static type advocate.
> I actually want to determine as much as possible at compile
> time.
>
> Said more generally, I want to be able to express constraints
> in my source code, and have the compiler tell me of as many
> as it can, whether they hold or not. If they hold, the compiler
> doesn't need to insert code to check them. If they do not hold,
> then my program is erroneous. "Variable x has type int" is a
> constraint, although we often do not consider it as such.
>
> Can we prove all constraints statically? No, we cannot;
> some are undecidable, and those we must check at runtime.
>
> The static camp says that's okay, every one you find ahead
> of time is a bug prevented. The dynamic camp says, screw it,
> you have to insert lots of runtime checks anyway; let's just
> use the one mechanism.

Thanks for the explanation.

I don't think I'll join either camp.

I'm more interested in data, anyway. Received on Fri Sep 10 2004 - 21:22:43 CDT