What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

[George Neuner]

On 19 Jun 2006 10:19:05 +0200, torbenm at app-3.diku.dk (Torben Ægidius
Mogensen) wrote:


>If you don't have definitions (stubs or complete) of the functions you
>use in your code, you can only run it up to the point where you call
>an undefined function.  So you can't really do much exploration until
>you have some definitions.

Well in Lisp that just drops you into the debugger where you can
supply the needed return data and continue.  I agree that it is not
something often needed.


>I expect a lot of the exploration you do with incomplete programs
>amount to the feedback you get from type inference.

The ability to write functions and test them immediately without
writing a lot of supporting code is _far_ more useful to me than type
inference.  

I'm not going to weigh in on the static v dynamic argument ... I think
both approaches have their place.  I am, however, going to ask what
information you think type inference can provide that substitutes for
algorithm or data structure exploration.

George
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