home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
ftp.cs.arizona.edu
/
ftp.cs.arizona.edu.tar
/
ftp.cs.arizona.edu
/
icon
/
newsgrp
/
group94b.txt
/
000117_icon-group-sender _Mon Nov 21 01:19:30 1994.msg
< prev
next >
Wrap
Internet Message Format
|
1995-02-09
|
2KB
Received: by cheltenham.cs.arizona.edu; Mon, 21 Nov 1994 05:45:11 MST
To: icon-group@cs.arizona.edu
Subject: Re: optional typing in Icon (longish)
Message-Id: <785380770@mse>
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 94 01:19:30 UTC
From: whm@mse.com (William H. Mitchell)
Errors-To: icon-group-errors@cs.arizona.edu
In the past I've done some sketching on the notion of optional types in
Icon. My own interest has been motivated not by performance, but rather by
using Icon for programming in the large. Having used C++ for a number of
years I've come to appreciate the language's ability to stop a lot of
stupid errors at compile time. On the other hand, in the typical C++ program
evolving intra-program interfaces usually cause a lot of suffering because
of extensive recompilation being required for even the smallest change in
common interfaces.
I'd like to have my cake and eat it too: I'd like to be able to fully specify
stable interfaces and have compliance checked at compile time and I'd also like
to have unspecfied or partially specified interfaces for code under
development.
A lot of issues come to mind immediately and I have to think that the idea of
partial typing must have had some research exploration already. Does anybody
know of languages that directly support the concept?
/------------------------------\ /----------------\
/ William H. Mitchell \ / 7120 E. Kiva Way \
/ Mitchell Software Engineering \o----/ Tucson, AZ, 85715 \
\ Consulting/Development/Training / \ 602-577-6431 /
\ OO Methods/C++/Icon/UNIX / \ whm@mse.com /
\------------------------------/ \----------------/