| > Oh, you mean something like this? Kind of, but, with wildcards, you still don't get the ability to unpack the existential for arbitrary further use. You can only unpack the existential within a single method, which is unnecessarily restrictive. If you unpack the same existential package twice (say, because you need to do it in two different methods, neither of which calls the other), then, as far as the type checker cares, that produces two different abstract types. Programming with abstract types in Java is a pain, which is why (understandably) Java programmers don't do it. > There are no runtime type errors at all in TCL, either. Yeah, but you don't get basic things such as integers, which is even worse. > There's a price you pay for dynamic runtime capabilities and for deep cross-language interop (e.g. a Clojure list is a Java List) Anyhow, the only thing I wouldn't want to do in Standard ML is manipulate arrays, mainly because runtime bounds-checking is unnecessary when you get your array algorithms right, but Standard ML requires it anyway. Interoperability between two memory-safe languages is completely useless to me. > and that's a price worth paying in many cases, considering that it's not high at all. Any price is high when you get nothing in exchange for it. |
OK, but I never said Java is ML. The example I provided is not uncommon.
> Interoperability between two memory-safe languages is completely useless to me.
Fair enough, but it's clearly not useless to many people.
> Any price is high when you get nothing in exchange for it.
I think that polyglotism and dynamic capabilities are a good deal, and I think that many others find it at least as useful as complete type safety, but, of course, that depends on your needs and personal preferences.