Re: Operationalize orthogonality

From: Tony D <tonyisyourpal_at_netscape.net>
Date: 1 Jun 2006 11:22:19 -0700
Message-ID: <1149186139.087662.173750_at_i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>


Well, my post was about the sort of monotyped lunacy that used to take place in the days before Pascal, and has started reappearing since enumerated types fell out of vogue. (I have absolutely no idea why this has happened; enumerated types must be one of the most useful language features yet devised.)

The spectre Bob raised is that of untrammelled type casting/coercion/conversion, which pretty much renders a language monotyped because everything ends up casting to everything else. Add to that making the type casting implicit and you've rendered type checking utterly redundant. That then leads you back to the horrors raised in my post.

Except that it's *even* *worse*, because you can still hack away *imagining* that you're using a strongly typed language - at least with the idiocy portrayed in my post you knew what sort of things could happen. Hence the brainfade from the C++ programmer when he couldn't understand the interaction of handy "features". Like they always said about C: "everything is legal - until run time ..."

Dammit, haven't these people ever heard of BCPL ???? Received on Thu Jun 01 2006 - 20:22:19 CEST

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