Flying With Python (Strong versus Weak Typing)

[Bengt Richter]

On Wed, 12 Mar 2003 20:29:33 -0800, Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed at ix.netcom.com> wrote:

>Greg Ewing (using news.cis.dfn.de) fed this fish to the penguins on 
>Wednesday 12 March 2003 04:13 pm:
>
>> Unless the extra memory required caused a
>> MemoryError... :-(
>>
>        For an embedded flight control system, I wouldn't be surprised to 
>learn the RAM space was just large enough for all static allocated 
>variables, and a moderate calling stack. 
>
>        Also, what reasons are there for using integer data in a embedded 
>system... Either speed, or Digital/Analog conversion hardware.
Or for implementing bit-field containers and ops, if the language doesn't
have non-int types for that.
 
>Promoting to a Python long isn't going to help if one has to feed an 
>integer bit pattern to an external chip.

Unless the excessive value was in an intermediate value of a computation,
and the final value going to the chip would have been ok. If the final value
would not have been ok, that would be an error in specifying the external
chip and/or its interface/scaling (or an algorithm or coding error, of course).

Regards,
Bengt Richter