On Thu 13 Oct 2011 16:26, l...@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes: > Hello troll! ;-)
I think that's a bit harsh ;) > Scheme is strongly, though dynamically typed. A string is a string, a > number is a number, and they cannot change types anyhow. As time goes on and I learn more things, I wonder how it is that "type" has gotten so many conflations. This one certainly has value, but I guess the CS world uses it in a different way, that types are theorems about programs. A program that type-checks is has some corresponding theorem that has a proof, and proving theorems about a program has value in terms of reliability, &c. (It turns out that it doesn't matter much which theorems are proven!) Anyway this second, proof side of types, is the side that Scheme does not have. C has a stronger story in that regard. > And of course, this is not to mention the many other ways to shoot > oneself in the foot–manual memory management being among the most > prominent This is what I meant when I said that C was dangerous. Programs in Guile have meanings, even seemingly ill-formed programs like ((lambda () x)) Because what happens here? You get an exception. What happens in C if you invoke puts without its argument? You might get a warning, but it will compile, and at runtime /anything can happen/. All programs of a sufficient size have bugs. The question is, what happens when there is a bug? In Scheme, the answer isn't usually "the Chinese/American/German government gets to read your email". With C it is. That is why programming in C is dangerous. Andy -- http://wingolog.org/
