What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

Joachim Durchholz jo at durchholz.org
Wed Jun 21 10:15:45 EDT 2006


Chris Uppal schrieb:
> Chris Smith wrote:
>> I think Marshall got this one right.  The two are accomplishing
>> different things.  In one case (the dynamic case) I am safeguarding
>> against negative consequences of the program behaving in certain non-
>> sensical ways.  In the other (the static case) I am proving theorems
>> about the impossibility of this non-sensical behavior ever happening.
> 
> And so conflating the two notions of type (-checking) as a kind of category
> error ?  If so then I see what you mean, and it's a useful distinction, but am
> unconvinced that it's /so/ helpful a perspective that I would want to exclude
> other perspectives which /do/ see the two as more-or-less trivial variants on
> the same underlying idea.

It is indeed helpful.
Just think of all the unit tests that you don't have to write.

Regards,
Jo



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