What is a type error?

[Chris Uppal]

Eliot Miranda wrote:

[me:]
> > Taking Smalltalk /specifically/, there is a definite sense in which it
> > is typeless -- or trivially typed -- in that in that language there are
> > no[*] operations which are forbidden[**],
>
> Come one Chris U.   One has to distinguish an attempt to invoke an
> operation with it being carried out.  There is nothing in Smalltalk to
> stop one attempting to invoke any "operation" on any object.  But one
> can only actually carry-out operations on objects that implement them.
> So, apart from the argument about inadvertent operation name overloading
> (which is important, but avoidable), Smalltalk is in fact
> strongly-typed, but not statically strongly-typed.

What are you doing /here/, Eliot, this is Javaland ?  Smalltalk is thatta
way ->

 ;-)


But this discussion has been all about /whether/ it is ok to apply the notion
of (strong) typing to what runtime-checked languages do.   We all agree that
the checks happen, but the question is whether it is
reasonable/helpful/legitimate to extend the language of static checking to the
dynamic case.  (I'm on the side which says yes, but good points have been made
against it).

The paragraph you quoted doesn't represent most of what I have been saying -- 
it was just a side-note looking at one small aspect of the issue from a
different angle.

    -- chris