pavel@UDEL-RELAY.UUCP@cornell.UUCP (pavel@UDEL-RELAY.UUCP) (12/10/83)
From: Pavel Curtis <UDEL-RELAY!pavel@rice>
To: net-lang@CORNELL
Date: Sat, 3-Dec-83 20:12:35 EST
From: umcp-cs!mark@Cornell
...
I would not say that Snobol4 and Smalltalk are strongly typed,
because the types are automatically coerced. A strongly typed
language would complain immediately if a type mismatch occurs.
Snobol4 and smalltalk both handle the situation as best they can,
and complain only as a last resort.
I don't remember enough of my Snobol4 to say, but this is certainly untrue
of Smalltalk. There isn't even any notion of 'coercion' in Smalltalk at
all, save explicit conversions added by the programmer. There is no way
to 'handle' a message-not-understood 'as best they can'. Not only does
Smalltalk complain immediately when a type mismatch occurs, but it's
usually not possible to resume the computation.
The term "strongly typed" is being used very glibly but, I suspect, without
any kind of a firm definition. Could one of you who is arguing about this
notion venture some prose to at least provide us with something concrete to
argue about? I suspect that just the definition is a slippery enough
concept to keep us off the streets.
Pavel Curtis
Pavel@Cornell
decvax!cornell!pavel