What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

[Joe Marshall]

Marshall wrote:
>
> That's really coming home to me in this thread: the terminology is *so*
> bad. I have noticed this previously in the differences between
> structural
> and nominal typing; many typing issues associated with this distinction
> are falsely labeled as a static-vs-dynamic issues, since so many
> statically
> type languages are nominally typed.
>
> We need entirely new, finer grained terminology.

Agreed.  That's why I've been biting my tongue and avoiding posting.
The discussion is going along the lines of the blind men and the
elephant.  I've seen about seven different definitions of what a `type'
is, and most of the arguments seem to come from people misunderstanding
the other person's definition.  I think that *most* of the people
arguing here would agree with each other (possibly in detail) if only
they understood each other.

Static type aficionados have a specialized jargon that has precise
meaning for a number of the terms being used.  People that aren't into
that field of computer science use the same terms in a much looser
sense.  But static type aficionados are definitely in the minority in
comp.lang.lisp, and probably in a few of the other comp.langs as well.

What we need is an FAQ entry for how to talk about types with people
who are technically adept, but non-specialists.  Or alternatively, an
FAQ of how to explain the term `dynamic typing' to a type theorist.