What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

[Joe Marshall]

Chris Smith wrote:
>
> Knowing that it'll cause a lot of strenuous objection, I'll nevertheless
> interject my plea not to abuse the word "type" with a phrase like
> "dynamically typed".

Allow me to strenuously object.  The static typing community has its
own set of
terminology and that's fine.  However, we Lisp hackers are not used to
this terminology.
It confuses us.  *We* know what we mean by `dynamically typed', and we
suspect *you* do, too.


> This cleaner terminology eliminates a lot of confusion.

Hah!  Look at the archives.

> This isn't just a matter of preference in terminology.

No?

>  If types DON'T mean a compile-time method for proving the
> absence of certain program behaviors, then they don't mean anything at
> all.

Nonsense.