What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

[Marshall]

Chris Smith wrote:
> Marshall <marshall.spight at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think what this highlights is the fact that our existing terminology
> > is not up to the task of representing all the possible design
> > choices we could make. Some parts of dynamic vs. static
> > a mutually exclusive; some parts are orthogonal.
>
> Really?  I can see that in a strong enough static type system, many
> dynamic typing features would become unobservable and therefore would be
> pragmatically excluded from any probable implementations... but I don't
> see any other kind of mutual exclusion between the two.

Well, it strikes me that some of what the dynamic camp likes
is the actual *absence* of declared types, or the necessity
of having them. At the very least, requiring types vs. not requiring
types is mutually exclusive.

But again, my dynamic kung fu is very weak, so I may not know
what I'm talking about when I represent the dynamic side.


Marshall