On 2 août 2013, at 15:47, Esteban Lorenzano wrote: > > 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 :( It depends on the people one knows then ;) All that shows that these terms are unclear for everyone and must be defined when used.
> >> >> [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 >>> >> >
