Optional Static Typing: Part II

[Carl Banks]

John Roth wrote:
> http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=86641

Nitpicking: I don't think he's necessarily in good company w.r.t. types
vs classes.  Take Ada, for example.   In Ada, a class is a set of types
(in particular, the type and all its subtypes), which is kind of the
opposite way Guido claims to see it.  Not the Ada is relevant, and not
that there is ever any agreement on terminology in computer science,
but still.

Based on their English language meanings, I would tend to agree with
Ada's terminology.  But, based on how the terminology developed for
computer languages (especially under the influence of C++), it seems
that most people would regard class as more of an implementation.

Another question: can anyone think of something an interface statement
could syntactically that an interface metaclass couldn't?  I couldn't
think of anything, based on the description, and it's not like th BDFL
to throw out keywords for things that current syntax can handle.  It
leads me to suspect that maybe he has something up his sleeve.  Hmm.
-- 
CARL BANKS