Optional Static Typing

[gabriele renzi]

Mike Meyer ha scritto:
> "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.

I also think some smalltalk allow you to tag stuff with type hints for 
performance.

> 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?

for documentation and 'crash early' purposes, I'd say.
Btw, why don't we rip out the approach of CL and some schemes that offer 
optional typing ? (not that I understand how those work, anyway)