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Since most of the stuff I work on are prototypes that might never see the light of day, I love dynamic languages like JS. I always find it confusing why more im

Since most of the stuff I work on are prototypes that might never see the light of day, I love dynamic languages like JS. I always find it confusing why more implicit casts aren't allowed when I have to use things like Python or C#. If print() in Python includes a string and an int, I think the interpreter should be able to implicitly cast my int to string in order to make it all work. As it stands, I have to go back in and cast it myself, which kills productivity. Any idea as to why implicit casts aren't more supported in strictly typed languages? I'd prefer a warning on runtime than having to go back to the code.

dom0 9y ago
> Any idea as to why implicit casts aren't more supported in strictly typed languages? That's the difference between weakly and strongly typed. If you take a strongly typed language, and add implicit casting, you get a weakly typed language. How this is resolved (or if at all) depends a lot on the language. For example, in C++ it is straightforward to define implicit conversions (which can become confusing). In Python on the other hand, it is generally up to the receiver to call some kind of conversion function, like str(), which will use an object protocol (like __str__) on the instance. This is what print("foo", 1) does, or "foo %s" % 1.