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=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Build language with weak typing, then add scaffolding later to strengthen it? Date: Fri, 22 May 2015 09:27:13 +0200 Organization: cbb software GmbH Message-ID: <7sxisvwpi6gf.1jbvbqlwtppsf.dlg@40tude.net> References: Reply-To: mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de NNTP-Posting-Host: enOx0b+nfqkc2k+TNpOejg.user.speranza.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org User-Agent: 40tude_Dialog/2.0.15.1 X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:25935 Date: 2015-05-22T09:27:13+02:00 List-Id: On Thu, 21 May 2015 12:29:36 -0700 (PDT), AdaMagica wrote: > Just think about how thick the Ada RM is with all its rules to make the > language safe and the RM correct. And think about the number of AI's each > language generation has to correct the errors in the manual. I disagree. The number of amendments and the size of the RM has little to do with strong typing. I think the language could be much smaller with types stronger. Weak typing requires a lot more language rules. Type inference does even more. Strong typing with nominal matching is much simpler to handle and define. E.g. dynamically polymorphic (tagged) types, which are a bit weaker, take more pages in the RM than all other plain types combined. > Compare this to other languages' RMs. I would address that to sloppiness. In many cases it is too difficult to define what is going on with all these implicit-nowhere-defined types, so people just don't bother to document it. -- Regards, Dmitry A. Kazakov http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de