Dynamic Languages Are Static Languages (2011)

This article is full of FUD and completely misses the point of static/dynamic distinction (flame-war, if you want). It's a perfect example of someone arguing to make a point without even trying to understand the opposite position. No one has ever argued that dynamic languages are more expressive than static languages. This is impossible, as long as we're considering Turing-complete languages. The fact that Harmony/EcmaScript 5 reference compiler was implemented on OCaml. However, it is equally futile to argue that…

While the core theory of this article, that dynamically typed languages are just statically typed languages with just one type, is correct, its extensions are questionable at best. It tries to claim that it is somehow restrictive to have only one type. That is nonsense, anyone has sat down and tried to write code in both Python and Haskell can tell you it is much harder to get the Haskell compiler to accept your code. Now having such a strict…

There was a lot of interesting discussion on the previous submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2346590 Robert Harper's tone seems to rile a lot of people up (some might say he's aggressive, but I would instead use "enthusiastic") and he seems to pick really flame-baity titles, but I'm really glad to have found his blog. It's usually thought provoking stuff.

It might be interesting to read this article along with https://tratt.net/laurie/research/pubs/html/tratt__dynamical...