Python from Wise Guy's Viewpoint

[ketil+news at ii.uib.no]

Matthew Danish <mdanish at andrew.cmu.edu> writes:

> On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 10:08:15PM +0100, Joachim Durchholz wrote:
>> Matthew Danish wrote:

>>>On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 07:00:01PM +0100, Andreas Rossberg wrote:

>>>>Pascal Costanza wrote:

>>>>> Can you show me an example of a program that does't make sense anymore 
>>>>> when you strip off the static type information?

>>>> Here is a very trivial example, in SML:
>>>>
>>>>	20 * 30

>> No, the correct answer isn't 600 in all cases.

> What is this stuff?  I am talking about integers here!

But the SML program isn't.  Or it may be, and maybe not.  So it's
ambigous without type information.

> Why can't the implementation figure out how to represent them most
> efficiently? 

Because it needs a type annotation or inference to decide that the
numbers are indeed integers, and not a different set with different
arithmetic properties.

> Lisp gets exact rational arithmetic right, why don't ML or Haskell?

Could you point to a case where they don't?  I don't understand your 
criticism at all.  Is the ability to do modulo arithmetic "wrong"?

-kzm
-- 
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants