What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

[David Hopwood]

Chris Uppal wrote:
> David Hopwood wrote:
> 
>>>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.
>>
>>A common term for languages which have defined behaviour at run-time is
>>"memory safe". For example, "Smalltalk is untyped and memory safe."
>>That's not too objectionable, is it?
> 
> I find it too weak, as if to say: "well, ok, it can't actually corrupt memory
> as such, but the program logic is still apt go all over the shop"...

Well, it might ;-)

(In case anyone thinks I am being pejorative toward not-statically-typed
languages here, I would say that the program logic can *also* "go all over
the shop" in a statically typed, memory safe language. To avoid this, you
need at least a language that is "secure" in the sense used in capability
systems, which is a stronger property than memory safety.)

-- 
David Hopwood <david.nospam.hopwood at blueyonder.co.uk>