What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

[Rob Thorpe]

David Hopwood wrote:
> Rob Thorpe wrote:
> > Vesa Karvonen wrote:
> >
> >>In comp.lang.functional Anton van Straaten <anton at appsolutions.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>>Let me add another complex subtlety, then: the above description misses
> >>>an important point, which is that *automated* type checking is not the
> >>>whole story.  I.e. that compile time/runtime distinction is a kind of
> >>>red herring.
> >>
> >>I agree.  I think that instead of "statically typed" we should say
> >>"typed" and instead of "(dynamically|latently) typed" we should say
> >>"untyped".
> [...]
> >>>It's certainly close enough to say that the *language* is untyped.
> >>
> >>Indeed.  Either a language has a type system and is typed or has no
> >>type system and is untyped.  I see very little room for confusion
> >>here.  In my experience, the people who confuse these things are
> >>people from the dynamic/latent camp who wish to see types everywhere
> >>because they confuse typing with safety or having well-defined
> >>semantics.
> >
> > No.  It's because the things that we call latent types we use for the
> > same purpose that programmers of static typed languages use static
> > types for.
> >
> > Statically typed programmers ensure that the value of some expression
> > is of some type by having the compiler check it.  Programmers of
> > latently typed languages check, if they think it's important, by asking
> > what the type of the result is.
> >
> > The objection here is that advocates of statically typed language seem
> > to be claiming the "type" as their own word, and asking that others use
> > their definitions of typing, which are really specific to their
> > subjects of interest.
>
> As far as I can tell, the people who advocate using "typed" and "untyped"
> in this way are people who just want to be able to discuss all languages in
> a unified terminological framework, and many of them are specifically not
> advocates of statically typed languages.

Its easy to create a reasonable framework. My earlier posts show simple
ways of looking at it that could be further refined, I'm sure there are
others who have already done this.

The real objection to this was that latently/dynamically typed
languages have a place in it.  But some of the advocates of statically
typed languages wish to lump these languages together with assembly
language a "untyped" in an attempt to label them as unsafe.