I hate to drag this incredibly interesting yet simultaneously tedious
conversation into the realm of the practical but...
Gabriel Sechan wrote:
Seriously, though. A variable *always* has a type, wether the language does or
not. The type of a variable is the kind of data it holds. This is separate
from its languae type. For example, lets say we have to store today's
temperature. Its type is temperature in degree's celsius. Its language type
may be scalar in perl, int in C++, etc. But its true type is still temperature
in degrees celsius. Having a language that supports typedefs and declarations
merely documents that for you, rather than forcing you to read the code to
figure it out.
Can you somehow encapsulate units in a type so that when we program a
completely hypothetical Mars lander it doesn't allow us to accidentally
mix meters and feet without doing a type conversion? I don't mean just
having an integer typecast to "altitude" but somehow call it "altitude
in meters" without being so verbose? And for bonus points it would be
nice if it could prohibit the involvement of any other units of distance
in the calculation so we don't accidentally mix our altitude in meters
with our rate of descent in feet per second during our retro-rocket
timing calculations.
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