What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

[Matthias Blume]

Pascal Bourguignon <pjb at informatimago.com> writes:

> Matthias Blume <find at my.address.elsewhere> writes:
>
>> Pascal Bourguignon <pjb at informatimago.com> writes:
>>
>>> Moreover, a good proportion of the program and a good number of
>>> algorithms don't even need to know the type of the objects they
>>> manipulate.
>>>
>>> For example, sort doesn't need to know what type the objects it sorts
>>> are.  It only needs to be given a function that is able to compare the
>>> objects.
>>
>> Of course, some statically typed languages handle this sort of thing
>> routinely.
>>
>>> Only a few "primitive" functions need specific types.
>>
>> Your sort function from above also has a specific type -- a type which
>> represents the fact that the objects to be sorted must be acceptable
>> input to the comparison function.
>
> Well, not exactly.

What do you mean by "not exactly".

>  sort is a higher level function. The type of its
> arguments is an implicit parameter of the sort function.

What do you mean by "higher-level"? Maybe you meant "higher-order" or
"polymorphic"?

[ rest snipped ]

You might want to look up "System F".

>>> So basically, you've got a big black box of applicaition code in the
>>> middle that doesn't care what type of value they get, and you've got a
>>> few input values of a specific type, a few processing functions
>>> needing a specific type and returning a specific type, and a few
>>> output values that are expected to be of a specific type.  At anytime,
>>> you may change the type of the input values, and ensure that the
>>> needed processing functions will be able to handle this new input
>>> type, and the output gets mapped to the expected type.
>>
>> ...or you type-check your "black box" and make sure that no matter how
>> you will ever change the type of the inputs (in accordance with the
>> interface type of the box) you get a valid program.
>
> When?

When what?