Re: Type declarations problematic?

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

On Fri, 24 Nov 2006 09:17:35 +0100, Maciej Sobczak wrote:

> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/10/12.html
> 
> "[it] seems to be that itοΏ½s explicit typing, where the programmer is 
> asked to declare the type of things, that leads to most of the problems.
> 
> [...] itοΏ½s starting to look like type declarations are one of those 
> accidental difficulties that good programming languages can eliminate."
> 
> 
> It is obvious that there is a place for dynamically typed languages, but 
> the above statements seem to be a bit too far-fetched. Do they mean that 
> "typeless" languages will just suck some of the Java audience (fine for 
> me), or is it maybe a more general problem that will drive the evolution 
> of programming languages further away from strongly typed systems?
> Do you plan a switch to Ruby? ;-)
> 
> Comments are welcome.

It is difficult to judge about a book not having read it! (:-))

The argument that explicit typing makes things more difficult is an obvious
and common rubbish (when taken literally, but see below). If types are
accepted then what's difficult about specifying them? Clearly a total
inference were far more difficult for both the programmer and the compiler.
Because instead of dealing with types you would have to deal with the rules
of inference of those. These rules constitute a higher-level language,
inherently, a more complex one.

But probably the answer to the riddle lies in the key turn of speech - "to
express data..." You know, there is no data without types! Data are
meaningless in a typed framework. So the whole argument goes back to the
idea of getting rid of the types, be they explicit or implicit. I wouldn't
reject it from the start, think about a kind of hyper functional language,
if they showed a way. But I doubt they did.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de