Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!barmar
From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Subject: Re: Re: Run-time Type Errors in Smalltalk (was Re: blip (was...))
Message-ID: <1991Apr18.192724.440@Think.COM>
Sender: news@Think.COM
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
References: <887@puck.mrcu> <2400043@otter.hpl.hp.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 19:27:24 GMT

In article <2400043@otter.hpl.hp.com> sfk@otter.hpl.hp.com (Steve Knight) writes:
>Drew writes:
>> The only experience with dynamically-typed systems I have are Lisp-based
>> systems, just today I crashed one with a type error.  
>If your system crashed, it has a serious bug.  Type errors should be caught at
>run-time and put you into a debugging loop.

Not if you've turned off runtime type checking:

(proclaim '(optimize (speed 3) (safety 0)))

declares that the programmer wants the code to go as fast as possible, and
doesn't want any time wasted on unnecessary type checking ("necessary" type
checking is that which is needed to implement generic functions).

When you make such a declaration, type problems become the programmer's
problem, just like in statically-typed languages.
--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
