From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1901f265c928a511 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public Path: controlnews3.google.com!news2.google.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!not-for-mail From: "Nick Roberts" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Typing in Ada Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2004 03:29:25 +0100 Message-ID: <2i2806Fi1iuhU1@uni-berlin.de> References: <2i1t1lFij4g5U1@uni-berlin.de> X-Trace: news.uni-berlin.de yH1ul4Lm/xGBSRJrCoooWgoQSf0/mXpmhdLSxSNEq6D4+Rzw4= X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1409 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1409 Xref: controlnews3.google.com comp.lang.ada:974 Date: 2004-06-01T03:29:25+01:00 List-Id: "Peter C. Chapin" wrote in message news:Xns94FAD66E1E08Bpchapinsovernet@207.106.92.237... > ... > It's not clear to me how all this relates to the concept of strong > typing. I think technically strong typing is about explicit type conversion, so that: A := O; ... A+O ... is not permitted, and one has to write: A := Apples(O); ... A+Apples(O) ... instead. I think this is the definition generally adopted in computer science. > I guess it would be helpful to have a precise definition of that term. > It sounds like from what we've said here that strong typing more a > matter of programming style than a language feature ... I would certainly say that that is where it matters. It doesn't matter if a programmer language has some wonderful feature if, in practice, nobody ever uses it. > ... at least where C and Ada are concerned. Is that a valid > conclusion? It seems reasonable to suppose that if C had always included a convenient facility for introducing differentiated types, this facility would have been used in practice. I think you will find the following paper (it's a PDF) very interesting with regard to the ongoing arguments about introducing such a facility to SQL: http://www.jeffsutherland.com/x3h2/97-094.pdf -- Nick Roberts