[E-Lang] static typing

[Dean Tribble]

At 06:38 AM 6/19/01 -0700, Marc Stiegler wrote:
> > Hence, a distributed programming language is either untyped or
> > confused.  Which would you rather have?  :-)
>
>This is a great line, and one which I will put in my pocket for use in
>future presentations, panels, and debates.

Agreed.

>I am going to chew on whether to
>use it in Walnut, where my goal is not to convince people to eschew static
>typing (at the risk of turning off a percentage of the readers by sounding
>shrill) but merely soften them up enough to get them to try the language.

I agree.  Note that I *like* static typing (or better still, type 
inference), and have always found programs to be better in essentially 
every dimension if they were compatible with static typing (simpler, 
cleaner, more efficient, more maintainable, more robust...).  It is a fine 
tool in my toolbox for making better programs, it's just not the magic 
bullet that some people claim, and in particular provides no actual guarantees.

>If
>I can just get them to use E for 3 or 4 days, I'm convinced they will become
>advocates. At least, if 3 or 4 days of E programming does not make them
>advocates, we have a bigger problem than the discussion of typing in Walnut
>:-)

Yup.