Message Passing and Shared Data

[dsimcha]

== Quote from bearophile (bearophileHUGS at lycos.com)'s article
> dsimcha:
> > Yes and this is why Haskell is widely regarded as "too academic".
> Haskell is somewhat academic (despite being WAY more widespread and used than
D), but not because it has experimental features switch-able at compile time :-)
> Regarding type system features, I think the pure annotation is one of the best
things added to D2. When a language like D has static typing, I want the full
advantages of it (like good type "annotations" enforced at compile time),
otherwise I'm fine with Python.
> Bye,
> bearophile

Ok, I guess this is just a fundamental world view difference.  Some programmers
(such as yourself) actually **like** static typing.  I'm not a huge fan of it, but
I consider it a necessary tradeoff if you want a language that generates efficient
code and allows you to do low-level work.  IMHO D's killer feature (and the reason
I use it in the first place) is that its generic programming facilities allow you
to have these while avoiding most of the rigidity and annoyingness of static
typing.  I especially dislike the "fancy" type system features because they
interact so poorly with generic code.  (Yes, this problem is in principle fixable
but it's a drain on our limited manpower and doesn't seem to be getting fixed in
practice.)

If you could somehow get both efficient code and the ability to do low-level work
in a dynamically typed language (the first is theoretically possible but insanely
hard in practice, the second is arguably impossible since dynamic typing is so
contrary to how the machine works at the lowest levels), I'd take a dynamically
typed language any day of the week.