"Strong typing vs. strong testing"

[BartC]

"Thomas A. Russ" <tar at sevak.isi.edu> wrote in message 
news:ymi1v7vgyp8.fsf at blackcat.isi.edu...
> torbenm at diku.dk (Torben ZÆgidius Mogensen) writes:
>
>> Trigonometric functions do take arguments of particular units: radians
>> or (less often) degrees, with conversion needed if you use the "wrong"
>> unit.
>
> But radians are dimensionless.

But they are still units, so that you can choose to use radians, degrees or 
gradians for literals, so that functions that take angle arguments can 
verify they are angles and not just numbers, and so that they can be 
displayed appropriately.

You can't do all that if angles are just numbers.

> The definition of a radian is length/length (or m/m) which simplifies to
> dimensionless.

-- 
Bartc