kurt@fluke.UUCP (Kurt Guntheroth) (12/07/83)
I was a little concerned to sport my ignorance of what an 'actor' language
is. Now (having heard another braver than I profess their ignorance) I
think I know. Actor languages are what we used to call object oriented
languages, right? Like Smalltalk?
Well... There is not all that much difference between languages like CLU and
languages like Smalltalk. Sure CLU tries to do most of its work at compile
time and Smalltalk does everything at run time (so far). But the way you
write programs in CLU and Smalltalk is similar. Look at Simula, the
grandaddy of object oriented languages, and the language from which they all
descend; Simula did all the type checking it could at compile time, but
knew when to do run time type checking too. Isn't this the best of both
worlds? Why not tell the language enough so it can do compile type checking
when this is possible, and provide facilities at run time to take care of
all other situations?
And let us burn at the stake all programmers who complain about strong
typing because it slows them down by making them type more words and correct
more errors detected by the compiler. Who wants to maintain code written by
these people anyway.
--
Kurt Guntheroth
John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc.
{uw-beaver,decvax!microsof,ucbvax!lbl-csam,allegra,ssc-vax}!fluke!kurt