Summary: strong/weak typing and pointers

[Stefan Axelsson]

Carl Banks wrote:

> It seems to me that "weak/strong" description of typing is too
> overloaded to be very specific.  Everyone seems to mean something
> different by "weak" typing.  
[...]
> I recommend we stop using "weak/strong typing" as a technical term,
> and leave it to be a meaningless buzzword for the ignorant peasantry.

You're not alone. Wikipedia lists 8 (!) different meanings for the term 
"Strong typing" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_typing):

I quote:
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Note that some of these definitions are contradictory, while others are 
merely orthogonal.

Because there is no generally-agreed meaning for the phrase 
"strongly-typed language", it is possible to find authoritative 
statements that many languages both are and are not strongly-typed. For 
example, under definitions 1, 2, 3, and 8, the C language is strongly 
typed; under 4, 5, and 6 it is weakly typed. Accordingly, it is easy to 
find people who will claim that C is a "strongly-typed language" and 
others who will claim that it is a "weakly-typed language".

Programming language expert Benjamin C. Pierce has said:

     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.
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I'd say that this horse is well and truly dead...

Stefan,
-- 
Stefan Axelsson  (email at http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~sax)