What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

Marshall marshall.spight at gmail.com
Tue Jun 27 11:08:03 EDT 2006


David Hopwood wrote:
> Marshall wrote:
> > The real question is, are there some programs that we
> > can't write *at all* in a statically typed language, because
> > they'll *never* be typable?
>
> In a statically typed language that has a "dynamic" type, all
> dynamically typed programs are straightforwardly expressible.

So, how does this "dynamic" type work? It can't simply be
the "any" type, because that type has no/few functions defined
on it. It strikes me that *when* exactly binding happens will
matter. In a statically typed language, it may be that all
binding occurs at compile time, and in a dynamic language,
it may be that all binding occurs at runtime. So you might
have to change the binding mechanism as well. Does the
"dynamic" type allow this?

 
Marshall




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