Subject: Re: Learning programming languages
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1999/07/25
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3141909545625225@naggum.no>

* vilh...@home.se (Vilhelm Sjöberg)
| For me this does not hurt (ergo I have yet to be enlightened).  I think
| it is more a matter of terminology then a real difference between the
| languages. 

  sorry, the difference is very real.  whether a language types variables
  at compile-time or types object at run-time is actually a difference that
  goes far beyond terminology.  now, object-oriented programming _means_
  that one dispatches on type information at run-time.  in other words, a
  language that types variables needs both techniques, which are at odds
  with each other at a fundamental level, but a language that types objects
  already has all it needs to be object-oriented from the start.

  there will always be hybrid languages, however.  it isn't very useful to
  use hybrids as arguments unless you understand what they are hybrids of.

#:Erik
-- 
  suppose we blasted all politicians into space.
  would the SETI project find even one of them?