Re: [stack] Parameters: ordered versus named

> That's because concatenative languages, in general, don't hide
> information; but I agree that if you do hide information, you have to
> pay the price. I was also illustrating that the price to be paid
> wasn't what you thought it was -- Cat pays the price not by being more
> primitive, but by having a sophisticated static type inference system
> (which can, of course, slow some things down, but is undeniably NOT
> primitive and is a desirable feature for many purposes).

A static type inference system certainly slows down compilation, but
all things given equal should speed up runtime execution because it
removes the need for runtime checks. Furthermore a static type
inference system makes it easier to optimize code, because you can
take advantage of properties that you have elucidated about the
runtime behaviour. However, every implementation is different.

A simple static type system has the disadvantage that typed terms will
disallow unbalanced stacks. You can't say things like:

if_tuesday [1] [1 2] ifte // does stack have one or two elements?

- Christopher