"no variable or argument declarations are necessary."

[Diez B. Roggisch]

> Suppose we have a typesystem which has the type ANY, which would mean
> such an object could be any type. You could then have homogenous lists
> in the sense that all elements should be of the same declared type and
> at the same time mix all kind of type in a particular list, just
> as python does.

The you have JAVA Object or C void*. Which cause all kinds of runtime 
troubles.... because they essentially circumvene the typechecking!

> 
> So how would this limit python.

The limitation is that in static languages I must _know_ what type to 
cast such an ANY, before calling anything on it. Otherwise its useless.

>>even though ususally the contents of a list 
>>share some common behaviour. And that exactly is the key point here: in 
>>a statically typed world, that common behaviour must have been extracted 
>>and made explicit.
> 
> 
> Would my suggestion be classified as a statically typed world?

See above.

> 
> 
>>Which is the cause for that notorious java io API. 
>>And, to extend the argument to ML-type type-checking, there you need a 
>>disjoint union of the possible types - _beforehand_, and the code 
>>dealing with it has to be aware of it.
>>
>>In python OTH, I just pass objects I like into the list - if they 
>>behave, fine.
> 
> 
> But now we are no longer talking about how typechecking would limit
> the language but about convenience for the user.

That's dialectics. Limits in the language limit the user and make things 
inconvenient.

Diez