On Aug 2, 2013, at 3:39 PM, Camille Teruel <[email protected]> wrote:
> Just a citation: > > “I spent a few weeks ... trying to sort out the terminology of ‘strongly > typed’, > ‘statically typed’, ‘safe’, etc., and found it amazingly difficult ... The > usage of these > terms is so various as to render them almost useless.” > -- Benjamin C. Pierce > > If you use one of these terms, you should give a definition. > And if you hear one, you shouldn't assume the author means what you think. > For example some people could argue that Smalltalk is untyped (or unityped > [1]), while you argued that it is strongly typed since there is no implicit > type conversion. > For most people, the static/dynamic and the weak/strong distinctions are > supposed to be orthogonal. > So, for most people, strong typing is not a synonymous of static typing. I have to say that IMHO, you are wrong in this one. For researchers, maybe. But I have seen in "industry word" that the terms are often exchangeable and for most people I have known, strong=static :( > > [1] > http://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/dynamic-languages-are-static-languages/ > > > > On 2 août 2013, at 06:03, [email protected] wrote: > >> greetings all, >> >> I'm in the final weeks of writing up my Masters dissertation and seeking >> some scholarly references to Smalltalk being "Strongly Typed." >> >> I my review of Smalltalk I was surprised to find that [1] describes >> Smalltalk as Strongly Typed, since Smalltalk is sometimes denigrated as >> being untyped / weakly typed. From reviewing discussion forums this now >> makes sense, but I can only find one of scholarly reference that briefly >> mentions this [2]. The most enlightening is [3] which defines Type Strength >> as: >> >> "A strongly typed language prevents any operation on the wrong type of data. >> In weakly typed languages there are ways to escape this restriction: type >> conversions" >> >> meaning that getting a MNU is a form of Strong Typing since you can't make a >> Smalltalk object run a method that is not its own. The problem appears to >> be that Strong Typing has been synonymous with Static Typing for a long >> time, and Static Typing strongly ties types to variables, except in >> Dynamically Typed languages, I think types can be considered independently >> from variables, in which case the definition of [3] has some merit, hence >> Smalltalk is Strongly Typed. >> >> Sounds controversial, so I'm just hoping for some peer reviewed backup - but >> only you have something easily to hand. This is just a small thing I can >> just leave out if necessary. >> >> cheers -ben >> >> [1] http://www.squeak.org/Features/ >> [2] p15, >> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.35.7507&rep=rep1&type=pdf >> [3] http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/publicaties/rapporten/cw/CW415.pdf >> >
