Loose type checking in E Tyler Close (tyler@lfw.org)
Mon, 12 Oct 1998 10:16:34 -0700

[Forwarded with permission, and Tyler has now added himself to the list.

--MarkM]

Hi Mark,

We met a couple of weeks ago at a Foresight meeting. I was there with Ping.

I was just thinking about my gripe about no static type checking in E. It occurs to me now that the runtime checks on method name / # parameters enables parameratized programming of the kind that C++ templates allow, without causing the source code explosion that C++ templates create.

You've no doubt already thought of this, but it would be a good thing to mention the next time some smart ass complains about no static type checking. It certainly would've shut me up.

I am also still a little hung up on your process style concurrency scheme. Can one vat make a series of method calls on another vat in an atomic fashion? If so, how?

I remember that one of the reasons for abandoning multi-threading was to eliminate wall-banging; however, if you made thread creation a capability, with a ThreadMaker object, wouldn't you still be able to guarantee deterministic execution of untrusted code and thus eliminate wall-banging?

I really enjoyed the meeting and learning about E. The more I think about it, the more slick it seems. I would very much appreciate being put on the ad hoc mailing list you have for E.

regards,
Tyler