Weak Type Ability for Python

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, 14 Apr 2023 at 17:17, Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 14 Apr 2023 05:35:22 +1000, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com>
> declaimed the following:
>
> >It was quite the experience back in the day (as OS/2's native
> >scripting language), and one that I'm truly glad to have had, as it
> >taught me so much about the differences between languages.
> >
>
>         I still miss the Amiga ARexx implementation which piggy-backed on the
> Amiga IPC scheme* such that any application that opened a "RexxPort" could
> be the target for "ADDRESS <rexxport>", and hence scripted using ARexx (Did
> IBM ever get beyond the two choices of command-line and a line-editor?).
>
>
> *       Granted, that IPC relied upon the fact that all applications shared one
> memory space, so there wasn't the overhead of copying data structures from
> sending application to the port's linked list and thence to the receiving
> application.

Yeah, the "ADDRESS" command has so much potential. Back in the day, I
built a MUD with REXX scripting, and within those scripts, the default
ADDRESS target was "send message to the invoker of the command", so
you could do something like this:

/* A bare string gets sent to the client */
"Hello!"
/* You can still invoke shell commands, if you actually need to */
address cmd "do_a_thing"

Rabid proponents of OOP say that it's all about sending messages to
things. Well, the ADDRESS command truly lets you send messages, so....
that means REXX is the most object oriented language there is, right?

ChrisA