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If this topic interests you, Julia's type system is worth checking out [1]. Julia is unusual among dynamic languages not just for having a powerful type system

If this topic interests you, Julia's type system is worth checking out [1]. Julia is unusual among dynamic languages not just for having a powerful type system (including parametric types), but also for making it idiomatic to make full use of types. Aside from the benefits to the programmer, this also allows the compiler to get to Rust-level performance where it's needed. I find that this is a nice compromise that gets a lot of the benefits of static type systems (small, local errors as opposed to behavioural bugs, ability to express concepts and constraints) without the drawbacks (loss of interactivity, or inability to escape the type system when it's appropriate). [1]: http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/types/ http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/types/

lmm 10y ago
It sounds very ad-hoc? (And Julia's benchmarking has not been reputable in the past, FWIW). > without the drawbacks (loss of interactivity, or inability to escape the type system when it's appropriate). One can absolutely have interactivity in a statically typed language, and virtually all statically typed languages support casting when you absolutely need to.
- one-more-minute 10y ago
  "Ad-hoc" seems subjective but to me it feels very carefully thought out. And while I've found the benchmarks to be accurate, I more importantly mean myself (and many others I know) being easily able to get high performance code when we need it. My second paragraph was only a personal take on what works for me, so YMMV, but nevertheless: I'm not arguing against static type systems in principle, but these are practical concerns rather than theoretical ones. I don't know of a mainstream static language that supports a fully dynamic REPL (Haskell's isn't great) and casting back and forth to `interface{}`, `Object`, or `Any` everywhere is a huge overhead compared to duck typing. I look forward to a future language solving those issues, but that's not the case today.
  - lmm 10y ago
    > "Ad-hoc" seems subjective but to me it feels very carefully thought out. I guess I'd like to see a simple formalism. > myself (and many others I know) being easily able to get high performance code when we need it. That's true for a lot of languages. It doesn't make it Rust-level. > I'm not arguing against static type systems in principle, but these are practical concerns rather than theoretical ones. I don't know of a mainstream static language that supports a fully dynamic REPL (Haskell's isn't great) and casting back and forth to `interface{}`, `Object`, or `Any` everywhere is a huge overhead compared to duck typing. I look forward to a future language solving those issues, but that's not the case today. Shrug, not my experience. I don't know what you mean by "fully generic", but I've been very happy with the Scala REPL - I've never once thought "this would be easy in the Python REPL but I can't do it because of the type system". Casting is indeed a big overhead if you're doing it everywhere, but my experience is the cases where you need it are extremely rare.
  - bjz_ 10y ago
    What do you feel is lacking from Haskell's REPL?

lmm 10y ago

It sounds very ad-hoc? (And Julia's benchmarking has not been reputable in the past, FWIW). > without the drawbacks (loss of interactivity, or inability to escape the type system when it's appropriate). One can absolutely have interactivity in a statically typed language, and virtually all statically typed languages support casting when you absolutely need to.

one-more-minute 10y ago
"Ad-hoc" seems subjective but to me it feels very carefully thought out. And while I've found the benchmarks to be accurate, I more importantly mean myself (and many others I know) being easily able to get high performance code when we need it. My second paragraph was only a personal take on what works for me, so YMMV, but nevertheless: I'm not arguing against static type systems in principle, but these are practical concerns rather than theoretical ones. I don't know of a mainstream static language that supports a fully dynamic REPL (Haskell's isn't great) and casting back and forth to `interface{}`, `Object`, or `Any` everywhere is a huge overhead compared to duck typing. I look forward to a future language solving those issues, but that's not the case today.
- lmm 10y ago
  > "Ad-hoc" seems subjective but to me it feels very carefully thought out. I guess I'd like to see a simple formalism. > myself (and many others I know) being easily able to get high performance code when we need it. That's true for a lot of languages. It doesn't make it Rust-level. > I'm not arguing against static type systems in principle, but these are practical concerns rather than theoretical ones. I don't know of a mainstream static language that supports a fully dynamic REPL (Haskell's isn't great) and casting back and forth to `interface{}`, `Object`, or `Any` everywhere is a huge overhead compared to duck typing. I look forward to a future language solving those issues, but that's not the case today. Shrug, not my experience. I don't know what you mean by "fully generic", but I've been very happy with the Scala REPL - I've never once thought "this would be easy in the Python REPL but I can't do it because of the type system". Casting is indeed a big overhead if you're doing it everywhere, but my experience is the cases where you need it are extremely rare.
- bjz_ 10y ago
  What do you feel is lacking from Haskell's REPL?