[dkersten]

> Why do you even bother making the point?

Maybe because you said:

> they prevent you from implementing dynamic dispatch.

and

> Routers. You can't have routers.

Which just isn't true. You can implement dynamic dispatch and you can have routers, but they come at a cost (either of complex code or of giving up compile-time type safety, but in a dynamic language you don't have the latter anyway, so with a static language you can at least choose when you're willing to pay the price).

> First Class citizens is what we are actually interested in when we talk about programming language paradigm-choices.

But that's not what you said in your other comment. You just said you can't have these things, not they're not first class citizens. Besides, some static languages do have first class support for more dynamic features. C++ has tools like std::variant and std::any in its standard library for times you want some more dynamism and are willing to pay the tradeoffs. In Java you have Object. In other static languages, you have other built-in tools.

[ukj]

Everything comes at a cost of something in computation!

That is what “trade offs” means.

You can have any feature in any language once you undermine the default constraints of your language. You can implement Scala in Brainfuck. Turing completeness guarantees it!

But this is not the sort of discourse we care about in practice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck

[dkersten]

Yes, and? How is that relevant here?

You said "you can't", kortex said "you can" and then you moved the goal posts to "you can because of turing completeness, but its bad, Why do you even bother making the point?" to which I replied "because its a valid response to you're `you can't`" now you moved them again to "everything comes at a cost" (which... I also said?).

Of course everything comes at a cost and yes, that's what "trade off" means. Dynamic languages come at a cost too (type checking is deferred to run time). So, this time, let me ask you: Why do you even bother making the point?

[ukj]

Tractability vs possibility.

You don't grok the difference.

You can implement EVERYTHING in Brainfuck. Tractability is the reason you don't.

The goalposts are exactly where I set them. With my first comment.

"Every programming paradigm is a good idea if the respective trade-offs are acceptable to you."

[dkersten]

Its perfectly tractable though. Just because you don't understand it or don't think it is, doesn't make it true.

> "Every programming paradigm is a good idea if the respective trade-offs are acceptable to you."

That's not what we are responding to. Nobody here is arguing over this statement. We are responding to you assertion that static typed compile-time checked languages _prevent_ you from having dynamic dispatch and that you _can't have_ routers because of that. Neither of which are true.

Dynamic languages prevent you from having compile time checks. Does that make them bad? Static languages give you compile time safety, but if you're willing to forego that [1], then you can get the EXACT SAME behavior as dynamic languages give you.

You literally said:

    For example, one good reason why strong static types are a bad idea... they prevent you from implementing dynamic dispatch.

    Routers. You can't have routers.

Nowhere did you say anything about trying to implement it at compile time. Also, if strong static types are a bad idea because you can't maintain them all the time, then dynamic typed languages are a bad idea because you don't get static types ever, its always at runtime.

Just because a hammer can't screw in screws doesn't mean its a bad idea, it just means that you can't use it for all use cases. This is the same. You can use static types and for the few cases where you need runtime dynamism, then you use that. That doesn't make the static types in the rest of your code bad. It just gives you additional tools that dynamic types alone don't have.

[1] to various degrees, its not all or nothing like you seem to be implying, there are levels of middle ground, like std::variant which maintains safety but you need to enumerate all possible types, or std::any which is fully dynamic but you give up compile time checks

[bidirectional]

You can't actually implement everything in Brainfuck. You can implement something which is performing an equivalent computation in an abstract, mathematical sense. But there's no way to write Firefox or Windows or Fortnite in Brainfuck. Turing completeness means you can evaluate any computable function of type N -> N (and the many things isomorphic to that), it doesn't give you anything else.

[dkersten]

Just as a Turing machine requires an infinitely sized tape to compute any computable function, so too would brainfuck require an indirect sized tape (or whatever it’s called in BF) to compute any computable function. Since memory is finite, neither of these properties are actually available on real hardware.

[ukj]

I am interested in computation. Period. Not any particular model of computation (programming language); and not merely computation with functions from N->N.

Quoting from "http://math.andrej.com/2006/03/27/sometimes-all-functions-ar..."

"The lesson is for those “experts” who “know” that all reasonable models of computation are equivalent to Turing machines. This is true if one looks just at functions from N to N. However, at higher types, questions of representation become important, and it does matter which model of computation is used."