What are OOP's Jargons and Complexities?

Ray Dillinger bear at sonic.net
Wed May 25 04:16:03 EDT 2005


Wibble wrote:
> Thats how common lisp specifies a vector.
> 
> Andreas, your link indicates that lisp is a Weakly typed language not
> strong.  Theres no compile time type semantics, at least in CommonLisp,
> MacLisp, ZetaLisp or FranzLisp.
> 
> (setq foo #(1 2 3))
> (setq foo 1)
> (setq foo "Whatever")
> 
> 
> Theres no type associated with foo, only with what the variable is
> currently referencing.
> 
>  From your link:
>   When the types detected or declared are strictly enforced by the
>   language's semantics, the language is strongly-typed.
>   when the semantics of the language allows for inconsistencies between
>   the compile-time type and the run-time type, the language is
>   weakly-typed.


I think that such terms of art are sufficiently broad and
subject to interpretation that it is now necessary for each
researcher to say exactly what they mean by a claim placing
a language in a category. That definition must be taken
into account when interpreting the claims that particular
paper makes about those language categories.

That so many researchers have chosen to use the same terms
(static, dynamic, strongly, weakly ... ) to describe subtly
different things is distressing.

				Bear








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