Unofficial wish list status.(Jul 2008)

[Justin Spahr-Summers]

On 2008-07-23 16:09:02 -0500, Yigal Chripun <yigal100 at gmail.com> said:

> Sean Kelly wrote:
>> Yigal Chripun wrote:
>>> superdan wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> good language design is not about the kitchen sink as much as
>>>> harmoniously accommodating multiple styles. nobody has shown that
>>>> that can't be done.
>>> 
>>> Since a language is a compromise that's only true to an extent. Some
>>> features are conflicting and you cannot design a language with all
>>> features because of that. You cannot design a language both static and
>>> dynamic ( At least to my knowledge ) since these two approaches are
>>> conflicting designs. And both ways have cons and pros. Can you design a
>>> language with the benefits of both, without the drawbacks of both?
>> 
>> Java is a statically typed, dynamic language.  So it can be done, though
>> I'm sure people have varying opinions about the benefits of this
>> approach :-)
>> 
>> 
>> Sean
> 
> I meant statically typed vs. dynamically typed. and you cannot have
> both. I do not understand what you mean with your Java example.

Actually, Objective-C is pretty close to having both. Variables are 
statically typed for types inherited from C (primitives, essentially), 
and can optionally be statically typed for object pointers (e.g. 
NSString *), but you can also use "id" to represent any object. Even 
beyond declarations, there are things like "isa swizzling" that can 
change the observable type of an object or class at runtime.