Re: [stack] sweetening concatenative syntax

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "William Tanksley, Jr" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2008 10:20 AM
Subject: Re: [stack] sweetening concatenative syntax


> Stevan Apter <[email protected]> wrote:
>>  this is the sort of thing that makes me type-averse.  i understand that
>>  proponents of types have their reasons, but i can't help thinking that it's
>>  one of those things that language-designers like more than language-users.
>>  one of the beauties of joy is that quotations are lists are programs, and
>>  in some variants, are stacks.
> 
> There are two good things about types.
> 
> The first is that, implemented right, they can help you write code
> (for example, Ada's attributes, c.f. e.g.
> http://www.csupomona.edu/reference/ada/rm95html-1.0/rm9x-A-05-03.html).
> Most people who design statically typed languages don't bother
> thinking of how types could be helpful beyond simple static
> polymorphism (or worse, overloading).
> 
> The second is that they help clarify our understanding of what a
> language is doing. If an operation in a language cannot yet be typed,
> we do not have a complete idea of what it's doing yet.

but if the language is incapable of expressing a well-formed thought
because the type-system prevents that, then so much the worse for typing.
that is, i start with clear and distinct idea of the algorithm and its
data-structures, and then must work around limits on expressibility created
by the type-system ... ?

> 
> I'm not a static typing maniac, but I'm strongly in favor of figuring
> out static types, and I've often enjoyed using static languages.
> 
> -Wm
>