RE: type-checking [Was: What is Perl?]

[Peter Scott]

At 02:31 PM 8/1/00 -0700, Tony Payne wrote:
> > No, I disagree.  Perl gains a lot of its expressive power from being lax
> > about typing.  I suspect it will also impose an unacceptable overhed for
> > the vast majority who don't want it - at the very least every variable
> > access will have to check an 'are you typed' flag.
>
>I agree that weak typing is a huge advantage for Perl -- if the task is
>small.  However, for a large project with more than 2 engineers, strong
>typing can save weeks of integration effort.

I believe this for C/C++ projects, but I am unconvinced of it for 
Perl.  And I have managed large Perl projects.  Strong typing was never 
something I missed.  It would likely get in the way with the number of 
heterogeneous data structures that I am wont to employ.  An easy facility 
for unit testing, on the other hand...

Perhaps the best of both worlds would be design-by-contract?  A la Conway?


--
Peter Scott
Pacific Systems Design Technologies