It's unityped! It has one type with infinitely many variants/tags (.<string>). Match failure occurs at runtime as in any other safe typed language such as Haskell or ML.
>Match failure occurs at runtime as in any other safe typed language such as Haskell or ML.
That is incredibly disingenuous. The only way a Haskell or ML program could be as colossally unsafe as a unityped language program is if the programmer used only one giant sum type for the entire program, and most functions in the program were non-total with respect to that type.
"Unityping" provides no static type safety. It is isomorphic to, and usually a euphemism for, the lack of any static type system.
Yeah, it was a difficult decision to remove types - I'd gotten myself into a corner trying to tack on dependent types, and it just wasn't happening. My bet is that unlike most of the un{i,}typed languages out there (most of which I'd categorize as lisps and smalltalks), tulip provides tagging and destructuring that allows the programmer to maintain some level of control over the polymorphism. Tulip will panic at runtime for non-total functions, but ideally you'll have the tools necessary to keep the panic as close to the problem as possible.
If you customize your runtime behavior based on any metadata about the value on which you operate, you have multiple types. Attempting to change the syntax will not change the fact that you need to differentiate behavior for numbers and strings.
> the fact that you need to differentiate behavior for numbers and strings
That's actually not exactly right: for example in Forth you really have no types at all.
Also, if somewhat uses a word such as "unityped" or "type with infinitely many variants" you should immediately know that any mention that "there are types, alright, just checked on runtime" will be immediately rejected. Majority of static typing fanatics are like that.
"Majority of static typing fanatics are like that."
That's not the problem. The problem is that to a first approximation, every language is "type safe" in the sense that you can't add a string to a number. Even in those languages where it looks like you can, it's because of a certain usually-limited set of automatic coercions, not because you can actually add a number to a string.
Truly adding a number to a string looks like this:
The string is, of course, a pointer, and the result, of course, is gibberish. This is why "no" languages to speak of implement this form of "untyped language"; it isn't what anybody actually wants. (Assembler, of course, has it, but that's an exception for obvious reasons.)
A term that describes essentially 100% of languages is not a useful one, so static typing usually refers to a language whose type system is somehow more restrictive at compile time than "Everything is a variant type and we'll work it out at runtime".
> The problem is that to a first approximation, every language is "type safe" in the sense that you can't add a string to a number
We're not discussing a concept of "type safety" here at all, but rather a concept of "untypedness". I just can't agree that for example Common Lisp (with CLOS), Smalltalk or Python are "untyped". They are not: untyped language is one which has no type errors both on compile time and runtime (unless I'm very . An obvious example is Assembler, but Forth or TCL qualify too. And quite a few others do too. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language#Typed_vers...
> so static typing usually refers to a language whose type system is somehow more restrictive at compile time than "Everything is a variant type and we'll work it out at runtime"
Again, it was never suggested that Tulip has "static types". It doesn't of course.
What I said is that it has types. I don't want to discuss how much better "static typing" is than "dynamic typing" or vice versa, this makes for a very boring discussion similar to Emacs vs. Vim and I'm not interested in it at all. I just object to the notion that "static types" are the only kind of types we can ever have in a language.
The problem is with "static typing fanatics", really. They'd like to bend the terminology in a way which helps them promote static typing, for example by equating all types with static types. This is both dishonest and unnecessary. No serious static typing advocate would do this (I hope) - static typing is a great idea able to defend on its own, there's no need to lie about "the other side" of the argument.
Well, all fanatics are like that. Way too much Kool-Aid, way too little critical thinking.
"I just can't agree that for example Common Lisp (with CLOS), Smalltalk or Python are "untyped"."
You completely missed my point, as evidenced by the fact you appear to believe I just claimed that when I in fact claimed the exact opposite, which is that since darned near nothing is "untyped", that's not a useful concept to use in discussing whether something is "typed" or not.
Assembler is truly untyped. Forth is untyped. Tcl is not untyped... it simply has a built-in coercian rule that it'll turn everything into strings if it doesn't like what you do to it. It's as close as you can get, but it isn't untyped.
A concept that describes only two languages is not all tha useful.
"They'd like to bend the terminology in a way which helps them promote static typing, for example by equating all types with static types."
Again, the fact that you appear to have completely missed my point is evidenced by the fact that I drew a distinction whereby languages may be "dynamically" or "statically" typed but darned near nothing is "untyped".
With all due respect, you're not in a position to be claiming that other people are "fanatics"... you don't have the information to come to that conclusion because you appear to be incapable of reading what people say, because you've already decided in advance what they're going to say. Yes, that makes the world look like... well... anything you want, really, but it's not a true description. You are not in a position to be complaining about other people's "critical thinking" skills when you yourself aren't even accurately gathering information with which to critically think.
Early C? The parent described accurately how pointer addition in C works for all char pointers. (Well, other than the “nobody wants that” part, because that's how you skip n bytes of a string.)
Not true (technically). When you add an integer to a char, you get an integer. (If you add a floating point number, the result is such as well.)
You can, of course, use the integer you got like a char (after all, C's char is a small integer type) to get your gibberish. You can also use a floating point number as a char, because C has lax implicit conversions.
Yep! It focuses more on dynamic type-checks than on static typing though, so I put it in the category of "untyped functional" - more like clojure and erlang than haskell or ml.
Well, dynamic types are still types. :) It also seems strongly typed through a lack of implicit conversions between types.
I would say this is more like go than anything, though it seems to lack methods (and interfaces) and includes a functional syntax.
You're going to run into issues when attempting to extend polymorphism for built-in functions to user-defined types—imagine trying to figure out how to sort an 'unknown' type without a way to compare them without modifying the method to be explicitly aware of the new type.
There does seem to be a method/interface system (Under the "Methods, Protocols, Implementations" header). And it seems to have some sort of dispatch system for tagged structures that can be later modified by the user.
Exactly! This is what the @method / @impl system is for - it's about equivalent to clojure's defprotocol. Future plans include named protocols consisting of multiple methods, and protocol-based matching.