What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

[Pascal Bourguignon]

"Marshall" <marshall.spight at gmail.com> writes:
> Yes, an important question (IMHO the *more* important question
> than the terminology) is what *programs* do we give up if we
> wish to use static typing? I have never been able to pin this
> one down at all.

Well, given Turing Machine equivalence...

I'd mention retrospective software.  But you can always implement the
wanted retrospective features as a layer above the statically typed
language.

So the question is how much work the programmer needs to do to
implement a given program with static typing or with dynamic typing.


> The real question is, are there some programs that we
> can't write *at all* in a statically typed language, because
> they'll *never* be typable? I think there might be, but I've
> never been able to find a solid example of one.

More than *never* typable, you want to identify some kind of software
that is not *economically* statically typable.

Was it costlier to develop the software developed in non statically
typed programming languages than in a statically typed programming
language?   

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/

"I have challenged the entire quality assurance team to a Bat-Leth
contest.  They will not concern us again."