Python from Wise Guy's Viewpoint

[Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters]

Joachim Durchholz <joachim.durchholz at web.de> writes:
>My 100% subjective private study reveals not a single complaint about
>over-restrictive type systems in comp.lang.functional in the last 12
>months.

I also read c.l.functional (albeit only lightly).  In the last 12
months, I have encountered dozens of complaints about over-restrictive
type sytems in Haskell, OCaml, SML, etc.

The trick is that these complaints are not phrased in precisely that
way.  Rather, someone is trying to do some specific task, and has
difficulty arriving at a usable type needed in the task.  Often posters
provide good answers--Durchholz included.  But the underlying complaint
-really was- about the restrictiveness of the type system.

That's not even to say that the overall advantages of a strong type
system are not worthwhile--even perhaps better than more dynamic
languages.  But it's quite disingenuous to claim that no one ever
complains about it.  Obviously, no one who finds a strong static type
system unacceptable is going to be committed to using, e.g.
Haskell--the complaint doesn't take the form of "I'm taking my marbles
and going home".

Yours, Lulu...

--
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of the hungry; books from the hands of the uneducated; technology from the
underdeveloped; and putting advocates of freedom in prisons.  Intellectual
property is to the 21st century what the slave trade was to the 16th.