Optional Static Typing

[Mike Meyer]

"John Roth" <newsgroups at jhrothjr.com> writes:

> <bearophileHUGS at lycos.com> wrote in message
> This may sound a bit
> cynical, but most real uber-programmers have either
> Lisp or Smalltalk in their backgrounds, and
> frequently both one. Neither of those languages
> have static typing, and they simply don't need it.

LISP has type declarations. Everybody I know doing production work in
LISP uses them. It's the only way to get reasonable performance out of
LISP compiled code.

Which raises what, to me, is the central question. If we have optional
static typing, can I get a performance enhancement out of it? If not,
why bother?

    <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.