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Are there any high-level untyped languages?

Name: Anonymous 2012-02-06 17:01

See title.

Name: Anonymous 2012-02-08 0:22

>>11
If you're considering languages with type erasure, then no. There is a bit of added complexity to satisfy the compiler (especially in strongly typed languages) but that translates into elimination of a certain class of bugs. In weakly typed languages, like C, the class is narrower but there is virtually no complexity added, owing to the fact that you can void the type system at will. (Sure there's more characters on the line when you do unsafe casts, but they are there to remove complexity from the compiled code, not add it.)

If you're talking about dynamic languages there may be some added complexity. I keep finding Javascript is far too willing to creatively interpret things I'd rather be a bug (in the aforementioned class of bugs) or a far less intelligent coercion. These implicit conversions give types/operators loaded meanings based on context. (Some people will rip you a new one for overloading operators in type erased languages—this is part of the type system, and it does add complexity, but it's optional and hopefully rare enough. The important thing to remember is the type is necessarily predetermined at the call site in these languages.)

>>14,17
Bwahaha. I've made that dare (and threatened to do the same) at least once or twice on here. High-five.

>>16
I don't think you grasp the problem. It's the fact that you have action-at-a-distance. Just the other day I wrote a function to do nothing other than initialize a global variable and today I wrote a function to do nothing other than to access the contents of a different global. This is where state gets dangerous. I just realized there's a bug related in the first one (which would have been avoided if I structured the program differently, to avoid the global.) I am not sure about the second, I'll have to review it tomorrow.

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