Re: Who said strong typing is a benefit?

[Dmitry A.Kazakov <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

steve_H wrote:

> I wish there was a 'matlab like' environment based on an Ada like
> language.

I think it is still possible to get Ada 83 code from MatLab [if MathWorks 
did not cancelled this feature]. 

> "MATLAB Type Handling
> An important benefit of MATLAB is that users do not have
> to declare variables to be of certain data types, as is required
> with 3GLs. In MATLAB, any variable can be assigned a
> value of any type, and that type can be changed implicitly
> at will because of an assignment to a new value of a different
> type.As a result, the MATLAB interpreter is prepared to
> deal with the most complicated data types (such as an ndimensional
> array of complex doubles) and is capable of
> performing operations no matter what the actual data
> types turn out to be at run-time"

All this can be easily achived in Ada. Just derive all your types from the 
same tagged base and use smart pointers to the objects.

The reverse cannot be achived. I.e. with MatLab one cannot develop systems 
of same scale, maintainability, performance and safety as one could do in 
Ada.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry Kazakov
www.dmitry-kazakov.de