[E-Lang] Thanksgiving present for E programmers

[Tyler Close]

Marcs wrote:
> Well. Strap yourselves into those easy chairs, and curl up
> with a good book.
> The book I am recommending is the partial, rough draft of
>
> E in a Walnut

I don't have an easy chair, but I couldn't help but read a bit right
away.

> Thrill to the power of the prose! Send me all your criticisms!

In the opening section, "Why E?", you write about static typing:

"Users of Perl and Python will immediately assert this is an
advantage; Java and C++ programmers will not be so sure."

I think this whole paragraph needs to be rewritten. E doesn't take one
side in this pitched battle. It actually creates a new, much better
alternative: optional parameter checking. Using the ":type" syntax, an
E programmer can write static type checks. Even better, the E
programmer can write much more stringent parameter checks with ease,
right in the method declaration. It seems easy to argue that this is a
vast improvement on static type checking. Since writing these checks
is optional, you also retain all the advantages of non-statically
typed languages. A plausible scenario is that programmers will write
the first cut of the code without any checks and then gradually add
them in once the design has stabilized and they want to check and
constrain its behaviour.

Tyler