ark (05/26/82)
While we're thinking about strict type checking, how about looking at the other extreme? I refer to dynamically typed languages like SNOBOL, LISP, APL, and SETL, in which a variable has whatever type it was most recently assigned. In languages like C and Fortran, you can get in trouble by using an expression of one type where another is needed. In languages like PASCAL, that's harder because the implementation will (usually) stop you. In languages like APL, it's frequently not an error at all. One might think that dynamically typed languages are therefore exceedingly error-prone, but my experience indicates otherwise.