Re: Build language with weak typing, then add scaffolding later to strengthen it?

[kalvin.news@gmail.com]

perjantai 22. toukokuuta 2015 17.01.14 UTC+3 kalvi...@gmail.com kirjoitti:
> perjantai 22. toukokuuta 2015 15.57.07 UTC+3 J-P. Rosen kirjoitti:
> > Le 22/05/2015 13:29, kalvin.-nospamhere-news@gmail.com a écrit :
> > > Even C could be made more robust, if simple type checking is
> > > performed at compile time. For example,
> > > 
> > > typedef int apples;
> > > 
> > > typedef int oranges;
> > > 
> > > apples a = 5; oranges o = a;
> > > 
> > > should generate type check error as the types are definitely
> > > different types. Also, assigning enums to ints and ints to enums
> > > should be considered illegal.
> > > 
> > I don't agree. C is a low level language, and good at that. Its types
> > are those of the  machine: bytes and addresses, the rest is a (small
> > quantity of) syntactic sugar.
> > 
> > If you need strong typing, use a strongly typed language. But don't
> > blame C for not being strongly typed, it was simply not part of the
> > requirements.
> > 
> > -- 
> > J-P. Rosen
> > Adalog
> > 2 rue du Docteur Lombard, 92441 Issy-les-Moulineaux CEDEX
> > Tel: +33 1 45 29 21 52, Fax: +33 1 45 29 25 00
> > http://www.adalog.fr
> 
> What I heard, C is used in programming some operating systems. And C/C++ has been even used for programming some serious large-scale applications - not very low level to me. I have also heard some rumours that quite often bugs in C/C++ software are related to its non-existent type validation ;) Adding some type checking wouldn't make it less suitable for low-level programming. After 20 years in embedded C/C++ programming, I cannot say that it is good even for low level programming because of the weak type checking. C/C++ are the cancer of software engineering.

What I would like to see in C/C++, and what would make me a bit less grumpy, is a compiler "#pragma strict" - or something like that - which would enable improved type checking in the compilation entity. Better yet, an improved Lint with strict type checking rules because some of the C compilers are legacy and cannot be upgraded. In that way, it would be backwards compatible, it wouldn't break any existing C/C++ source code base, but it would allow (at least me) to check my own code for type validity before I commit the code into the version control system. At would be also a step forward in order to make an improvement in code quality and robustness.