Flying With Python (Strong versus Weak Typing)

[Greg Ewing (using news.cis.dfn.de)]

A. Lloyd Flanagan wrote:
> All the strongly typed
> languages end up implementing something like templates solely to get
> around the problems caused by strong typing, and you end up with a
> complicated mess like C++.

I don't think it's fair to blame the complexity and
messiness of C++ on the idea of a parametric type
system. The messiness of templates
in C++ is mostly due to the grotty syntax chosen and
the way they interact with other complicated and
messy features of the language.

There are languages with parametric type systems
(e.g. Haskell, Eiffel) where it doesn't seem to lead
to any of those problems,

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept,
University of Canterbury,	
Christchurch, New Zealand
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg