That is what people who believe books about C# believe.

| However, the correct usage of that term also covers languages based
| on implicit typing (or type inference).

  Yes, Pascal, there is only one correct usage, and it is yours.

  Instead of being such a fucking annoying dipshit all the time, how
  about suggesting the terminology that you /would/ be happy with so
  we can get past this goddamn pestering of yours?  I shall endeavor
  to use the terminology your anal-retentive highness suggests simply
  because I hate your senseless abruptions and interruptions of what
  was, or at least could have been, a discussion of something other
  than your pathetic needs for the "correct" terminology.

| If your intention was to exclude the latter kind of languages you
| should have made that explicit.

  So sue me.  You seem to forget that there might be disagreement on
  the things you pronounce your One True Judgment on.  Please learn
  that I do not agree with you that "static typing" /usefully/ covers
  your pet functional languages.  So many things become impossible to
  discuss when you just /have/ to share your opinions on this matter.
  I also fail to see how I can make you happy.  No matter what people
  say about "statically typed languages", there is always room for
  some weirdo languages and its religious followers to scream "but
  /my/ language is different!".  The whole /point/ is that your pet
  languages are different from the entire rest of the family it tries
  very hard to be a member of, but is not.

| I consider it a fundamental mistake to use a general term for a
| proper subset without saying so.

  I consider it a fundamental mistake to leap out of context with a
  different specific meaning of a general concept than the one that
  is actually in use.  You annoy me about as much as the morons who
  can never grasp that "hacker" /also/ means a malicious idiot, but
  have to quip "the correct usage is cracker" solely to annoy people.
  If you have such a massive problem coping with the usage that other
  people accept, could you at the very least try to behave in public
  so you do not derail other people's discussions all the time?

| I didn't expect you to be more liberal in that regard.

  There we have it.  Your expectations.  I appreciate that you are
  /finally/ beginning to become aware of their contribution.

| [1] This would also explain your statement about me having "shown
| an /additional/ piece of information".

  Amazing!  You are able to connect the dots.  Congratulations!

  Have I made it clear yet that you piss me off?  Why do you have to
  continue?  Are social graces not part of your touchy-feely methods?

  That you, of all people, value anal-retentive "correctness" over
  the ability of other people to discuss something different from
  your pet peeves is actually pretty sickening since you also attack
  those who correct others.  You /disgust/ me, Pascal Costanza.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

Saying that people are massively inept because they believe strongly
in certain types of static typing is putting the cart in front of the horse.

Pascal

[...]
 > people who are massively inept at programming think that if they can
 > catch some bugs at compile-time, that somehow makes all the remaining
 > bugs less important and hard to catch.  This is in fact wrong.

I was referring to the very last sentence. ("This is in fact wrong.") I
don't think Erik wanted to deny the fact that some people believe in the
usefulness of compile-time checks, but he wanted to deny the usefulness
of compile-time checks as such.

Pascal

Some people actually benefit from reading.

BTW, I am still interested in the foundation (papers, links, etc.) that
you base the following claim of yours on.

 > Empirically, people who believe their compilers will catch bugs
 > for them because it enforces a ridiculously irrelevant aspect
 > of the task of programming, produce /more/ bugs than people who
 > do their testing right and do not believe in a class society for
 > bugs (such that they can ignore or repress some bugs).

...or have you also chosen to take on a liberal meaning of the term
"empirical"?

Pascal

BTW, the following recent message in the Types Forum may be
interesting to readers of this thread:

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/types/archives/current/msg01180.html

A short excerpt:

  [Bluntly put, it took Larry Wall (a SYSTEMS ADMINSTRATOR) to convince
  the world of the value of CommonLisp.  Think about it.  Think hard
  about it.  'cos it is true, and a really disappointing statement about
  the entire programming-language community.]

  What is wrong with you?

| Some people actually benefit from reading.

  You are not one of them.  Please cut the unwarranted arrogance.

| I am looking forward to an alternative suggestion of yours.

  What is wrong with you?  Please cut the unwarranted arrogance.

| BTW, I am still interested in the foundation (papers, links, etc.)
| that you base the following claim of yours on.

  What the hell makes you think that I will do anything to satisfy
  you apart from causing you to shut the fuck up?  You malfunction
  when you do not get things exactly the way you want them, and you
  are perfectly happy to derail discussions so you can point out what
  is "right", as if anyone needs to hear this from you.  You need to
  learn to deal with disagreement and rejection, Pascal, and you
  /really/ learn to deal with the fact that people do not accept what
  you think is the only right thing, and be satisfied to explain your
  views a limited number of times and let other people discuss things
  even though they do not use every term /exactly/ right by your
  standards.  If you make it your life's mission to correct everyone
  who misuses a term for which you have the right meaning, you are no
  better than any other deranged fanatic who cannot change his mind
  and refuse to change the subject (to use Churchill's definition of
  a fanatic).

| ...or have you also chosen to take on a liberal meaning of the term
| "empirical"?

  What is wrong with you?  Please cut the unwarranted arrogance.

  Why do you have to be such a snotty asshole when you are faced with
  rejection of your pet peeves?  You seem so utterly unable to deal
  with rejection that there is no telling what /would/ cater to the
  underlying psychological needs you obviously have.

  You turn into an extremely annoying, combative little neurotic when
  you are told that you annoy people, instead of trying to get the
  point and stick to the topic at hand.  Where is that friendly style
  of yours when it could be put to the test?  It works only when you
  feel superior to other people, does it not?  And when you do not,
  indeed /are/ inferior, you turn into a hostile dipshit instead of
  doing as you preach.  Be /nice/ when it counts, or shut the fuck
  about your holier-than-thou attitude about "style".  You are worse
  than most people when it comes to turning hostile, but you do not
  realize that, do you?  Other people of your ilk have staged /wars/
  on newsgroups when their sensibilities have been offended, like the
  mad muslems who rioted in Nigeria and killed hundreds of people
  because some journalist said something these deranged lunatics were
  unable to cope with rationally.  You remind me of such people.

  There is something seriously broken in you, Pascal Costanza.

  Unless you start to behave courteously and nicely even when your
  arguments are rejected, I have to conclude that you function only
  under very specific conditions and turn into a lunatic when those
  conditions are not met, just like religious fanatics.  Long ago, I
  concluded that the only reason you want all this "niceness" is that
  you cannot handle real objections to your misguided notions and
  therefore turn hostile in the face of failure.  Many "nice" people
  are nice only because they are downright evil when they do not
  strictly control themselves.  I think you are one of those, and you
  do not exactly help to refute this conclusion.

  Now, be specific, and tell me exactly what would make you happy and
  would make you shut up /forever/ about this neurotic non-issue of
  yours.  What do you want to call statically typed languages except
  those with type inference that you need to bring up to destroy a
  line of argument?  You answer this now, once, and I will call them
  "statically typed languages (or foo according to Pascal Costanza)",
  for the value you provide of "foo".  You can choose anything you
  want, as everyone will know who to ask what it means.  I want you
  to shut up about this so bad that I am willing to accept absolutely
  anything you call it, but I will also make sure that the terminology
  points back to you, because I do not want to be associated with the
  bogus psychological needs you have that you refuse to keep personal.

  I also think you should go repair yourself, and above all, /think/,
  even though it obviously hurts so much you much prefer to act on
  your emotions.  Once you start to /think/ even in when it hurts,
  you will take on a very different appearance, one that I will most
  likely accept and treat with respect.  Emotionally disturbed people
  with an axe to grind and a fanatic outlook on what is "right" do
  not, in general, encourage me to treat them nicely.  I cannot fathom
  why you do not grasp this and adjust your behavior to something
  that at least could have /some/ hope of achieving what you want.
  You see (or, of course you do not), when you insist that something
  is /right/ when it is also out of place, people will object to it
  regardless of the truth of your claim, and the more you insist, the
  /more/ they will object simply because you are out of place and do
  not grasp that it is not about how "right" you think you are.

  So, let us have the "Pascal Costanza terminology" for the statically
  typed languages that enables discussion of relevant aspects of them,
  so that we will never, ever, hear any complaints from you again!

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

  Accept and take responsibility for your own contribution, will you?

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

  Nobody is interested in what you think I want to do or not.  Keep
  such misguided speculations to yourself and QUIT ANNOYING PEOPLE.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

It's actually extremely simple: When you have a consistent terminology,
just name it. If you don't name it, what should one assume? If you are
not willing to admit that you don't have a consistent terminoloy, then
at least just shut up.

Pascal

  I do not.  I have asked you to state unequivocally what you would
  be happy that I called the languages I want to talk about so that
  we can rid the world of the abomination that is your incessant
  abuse of this forum with your personal problems.

  You refuse to answer.

  This must mean that you want this forum to be about your personal
  problems and your incessant whining about them and that you by far
  prefer not to be happy, but to complain, complain, complain.  This
  is consistent with the demand you make on others, but evidently not
  on yourself, to be nice -- or else!

| It's actually extremely simple: When you have a consistent
| terminology, just name it.  If you don't name it, what should one
| assume?  If you are not willing to admit that you don't have a
| consistent terminoloy, then at least just shut up.

  Then why do /you/ not simply answer the question?

  I am so tired of people who cannot accept responsibility for their
  own actions and emotions.  You demand something of me, when /you/
  come out of nowhere with your moronic complaints, and when asked
  what would make /you/ happy so we could be relieved of your moronic
  complaints, you do such a cowardly act as demanding of those /you/
  have arrested for what /you/ think is misuse to come up with what
  you obviously cannot deliver yourself.  The intellectual dishonesty
  you display defy words.

| I haven't seen any real refutation of my arguments yet.  You have
| made a mistake.  Why don't you just admit it?

  What!?  The /gall/! You really /do/ suffer from serious delusions
  of being the only one to have the right answer in this world.

  Your mistake here is to believe there is a contradiction.  What has
  kept you from admitting that?  I know -- puerile notions of pride,
  notions of "honor" that belong in cultures known to stone people
  who abuse the name of their prophet.

| This is getting boring. Just read
| http://research.microsoft.com/Users/luca/Papers/TypeSystems.pdf -
| everything's sorted out in that paper.

  That explains what somebody else would want to call it.  I ask
  /you/ what /you/ would call it, because /you/ storm in here and
  make your stupid complaints and derail discussions when your petty
  personal concerns are disturbed.  And you won't quit, either!

| There's no "Pascal Costanza terminology" with regard to type
| systems.  This is ridiculous.

  I want to know what would make /you/ happy and quit complaining.
  This is not complicated.  You refuse to answer, however.  That
  speaks volumes about your /real/ intentions in this forum: To stir
  up trouble when people do not do precisely what you want.  I have
  suspected as much when you started a war over /other/ people not
  being nice while you obviously could run the whole gamut from bad
  to downright evil.

  /You/ have complained.  /You/ get to explain what /you/ want other
  people to do.  Explicitly, no complications.  Just present us with
  the term Pascal Costanza wants everybody else to use for statically
  typed programming languages that makes it possible to talk about
  them without having Pascal Costanza complaining incessantly about
  misuse of terminology and dragging in irrelevant complications and
  moronic "contradictions" that are figments of your imagination.

  Is it /possible/ to talk about deficiencies of languages like C++,
  Java, and C# without having moronic complaints from Pascal Costanza?
  So far, it does not look like it.  If it is not possible, I shall
  have to append a disclaimer to every message I post that readers be
  advised to ignore the rants that inevitably will result from your
  mental hangup with terminology and your refusal to be explicit
  about what you want others to use instead.

  So, to repeat the very simple request: What would it /take/ for you
  to refrain from mentioning Haskell when deficiencies of statically
  typed programming languages are discussed?  Name it!

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

I have no focus whatsoever on the difference between implicit and
explicit typing. I have just given the counter-example under the
assumption that Erik meant what he said. The term "static typing" is a
well-defined term that happens to include both implicit and explicit
approaches.

Do we have a real issue here?

Pascal

Pascal called him on this by pointing out that some competent/knowledgeable
people believe in *some forms* of static typing.

Erik responded that that in the context of C#, his meaning was clear.

Pascal's response was essentially "you said what you said and it's simply
not true."

AFAICT that's really all that's going on in this thread.

It doesn't matter what concrete terminology I would personally prefer,
because we are not talking about personal opinions or tastes, etc. Just
use the correct and accepted terminology.

Oh, I am sorry, I have forgotten that you are obviously incapable of
reading. So I will help you out on this: According to the paper I have
repeatedly pointed to, the languages you mention are statically and
explicitly typed languages. Java is strongly typed, whereas C++ and C#
also allow weak typing in some cases.

Pascal

Thanks for this summary.

Pascal

  Several other people here have now commented on your mistake, but I
  see nothing from you that could give me an indication of capability
  to correct mistakes, nor of actually understanding what you are
  asked to do, but you project this paucity of abilities onto others.
  Why do you so arrogantly assume that other people are just as
  deficient as yourself?  Why do you treat other people as if they are
  what you fear most that you might be yourself?

  You hurl a number of really insane accusations at me about things
  you have no possible /means/ to know, further supporting an argument
  of mine that you do not understand that acquiring knowledge is work
  and requries directed, conscious effort.  When you make such claims,
  I /know/ that you lack some /very/ fundamental argumentative and
  intellectual skills.  I look at you and see a person who does not,
  even when it would save him, /think/ and /reflect/ and get a grip on
  himself.  It is truly disturbing to watch.  And over such an ickle
  thing as terminology and imaginary contradictions.  Lamentable!

  One of the skills you lack is to limit your statements to what you
  /can/ know, and, in the words of Aristotle, to say about that which
  is that it is and about that which is not that it is not; he talked
  about /honesty/ and /intgrity/.  Since this discussion is concerned
  with whether what you think is correct is indeed so, I look for
  clues in what other things you write that you obviously appear to
  think is correct, but you know what?  I find that you make a number
  of utterly /unfounded/ claims, wild conjectures based on that
  hateful thing in emotionally disturbed people that demonizes their
  opponent so they do not have to treat them like human beings.  You
  /make up/ things to accuse me of.  This does not happen to people
  who retain their composure and are in control of themselves.  It is
  a very strong symptom of complete mental breakdown.  Why do you
  share this with the world.  And when all that has been required of
  you is to tell me exactly, unequivocally, what would make you happy.
  You continue to tell the whole world how unhappy you are, but you do
  not make a single attempt to rectify the situation.  Pathological!

  This whole unwillingness to curtail your fantasizing about me goes
  directly to your credibility and your /ability/ to distinguish what
  you believe from what is out there in reality.  I have suspected
  that to you, there /is/ no such distinction, that you literally live
  in your own world where everything you say makes sense, but look at
  yourself, man!  You make sweeping claims about other people in a way
  that strictly speaking is /insane/ -- what you say /cannot possibly/
  all be true at the same time.  That tether between your mind and
  reality has overextended itself.

| It doesn't matter what concrete terminology I would personally
| prefer, because we are not talking about personal opinions or
| tastes, etc.  Just use the correct and accepted terminology.

  Again, it appears that you are not even aware that in order to use
  "correct and accepted terminology" you need to know precisely what
  you are talking /about/.  There is no point in knowing what the
  "correct and accepted terminology" is unless you also know what it
  means.  The point of asking /you/ what would make /you/ happy and
  quit complaining and hurling accusations at people (is this your
  idea of being nice and friendly, by the way?) is to know whether
  /you/ have any idea whatsoever about what other people are talking
  about?  But clearly, you do not.  You assume that some disembodied
  "correct and accepted terminology" is sufficient, but do you know to
  what it applies?  I fear you do not even ask yourself that question.

| You can read, can't you?

  I marvel at your idiocy, Pascal, but more than that, I am deeply
  worried about your sanity.  Because, you see, after this moronic
  rhetorical question, which suggests that if you were any slower, you
  would be thinking backwards, mere moments later, you write this:

| Oh, I am sorry, I have forgotten that you are obviously incapable
| of reading.

  Pascal, I have long suspected you to be a deficient, malfunctioning
  human being, but when you go and say such things, I know that the
  fragile connection between reality and whatever is inside that poor
  excuse for a cranium of yours is no more.  /Psychosis/ has set in,
  wherein you actually believe what is not so to be the truth, and
  sadly but typical of psychotics, you insist with a strenght rivaling
  religious fanatics that only what you think is right, even though it
  is frequently self-contradictory and betray a mind that is no longer
  accepting any input from the external world.

  Rest assured that I can read, Pascal, also between the lines.  When
  I look at your "output", I feel the remnants of pity that a flood of
  disgust cannot quite wash away.  You betray your innermost fears to
  me in ways at which your future self will recoil in horror, and you
  display your want of coping strategies in ways that so far removed
  from an adult discussion that somebody, /anybody/ with compassion
  for you, would have yanked you out of that mental state you are in,
  /made/ you snap out of it since you cannot do that on your own.

  This was about /programming languages/, Pascal!  You act as if your
  entire psychological makeup is under attack, that your identity as a
  person is in danger, that you will cease to /exist/ if you have to
  admit that (1) your contradiction was a figment of your imagination
  and (2) your personal problem with "correct" terminology tells the
  whole world that you /malfunction/ when an error occurs.  Smart and
  healthy people exhibit a graceful degradation of performance under
  pressure as well as self-awareness of same, but you lose /all/ your
  marbles at once.

  Do you think you could try to get back to what your objections were?
  Do you think you could at least /try/ to keep somewhat on track?  I
  do not want to hear any more of your insane ranting and raving about
  whether I can read or what you have "forgotten" of what you have
  clearly invented entirely on your own.  I want you to be /nice/ to
  me, like you have argued that people should be towards one another,
  and apologize for all the insane accusations you have hurled my way,
  and /demonstrate/ the superiority of your kinder, gentler way.  Use
  that warm language of yours, show cognizance and care for how I feel
  and display your excellent command of the way you suggest that I and
  others deal with people on this newsgroup.  As you are hurt and
  frustrated, there is no better time than now to /perform/ according
  to your own standards.  Show us the Pascal Costanza that you want us
  to remember, your flair for compassionate communication.  Show us
  the grandeur of a person who can, in the face of negative emotions
  and suspicions that he is a staggering fool, put his money where his
  mouth is.  Show us the Pascal Costanza that takes it upon himself to
  lambast those who unfairly criticizes yet is far and away above that
  reprehensible act himself.  Show us Pascal Costanza as he wants to
  be seen!  I await your performance with baited breath.  Imagine, not
  a harsh word, not one accusation, not a single rabid rant.

  We who are about to read, salute you!

  By the way, I do have a really heartfelt suggestion to you: Do try
  to be nice to people.  Not because I think you should primarily be
  nice, but because I think you should avoid trying to insult people
  at all cost: You absolutely stink at it, and I loathe incompetence.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

"Al Qa'ida members follow Islam."

"All who follow Islam are Al Qa'ida members"

Now compare Erik's original statement with your paraphrase.

As a sidenote, it's really amazing what amount of nonsense you read into
my statements.

Pascal

[1] Perhaps that's the essential problem of our "conversation" that you
regard my statements as objections.

  You continue to amaze me (which suggests that I should downgrade my
  expectations, I guess) in not understanding the difference between
  what people write and what you interpret it to mean, which suggests
  an absence of understanding, indeed /appreciation/, of interpretive
  processes.  How is this possible?  How can anyone fail to grasp
  that they have had to perform some /mental work/ to arrive at the
  meaning of what they have read and that this work /necessarily/
  embodies the influences of their own context, conceptual framework,
  and prior participations in the great dialog that is civilization?
  I fear that the conclusion is that no such work has occurred.

| In Guy Steele's example, the type checker obviously accounted for
| _all_ potential problems. This is what makes this quote so
| interesting.

  I am fairly confident that that is /not/ what he meant, as it would
  be a fairly retarded interpretation of what he wrote, and although
  people vary greatly in their performance although they usually have
  sufficient self-awareness not to publish sheer idiocy (with some
  glaringly obvious exceptions), I do not wish to insult Guy Steele's
  intelligence by assuming he meant such a thing.

| I didn't intend to disprove Erik's reasoning, I just wanted to
| point to an interesting counter-example.

  Amazing.  And you objected to calling it additional information.

| Actually I also think that static type checking does not help in
| most cases, why would I use Common Lisp otherwise.

  Because you do not practice what you preach?  Oh, sorry, there was
  no question mark.  Smart move.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

The important point here has nothing whatsoever to do with
terminology.  The point is that static typing generates an illusion of
safety that isn't there.  This applies to all kinds of statically
typed languages, sometimes in different ways.

In languages that also provide weak typing like C++ this is only
easier to trigger: Just cast, or use an invalid pointer, and undefined
behavior will come all over you.  As there is no runtime type
information, there cannot be any mechanism that would protect you from
this.  In Java, watch out for runtime type errors on array access, and
null pointer exceptions.  Languages like Haskell or ML are designed in
a way that they can claim that they won't have any type errors at run
time; of course, this is only really correct if you kindly adopt their
definition of runtime type error.  Earlier I gave an example:

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=lkvg5bxreq....@pc022.bln.elmeg.de

This is not a runtime type error according to the ML crowd but it
certainly is in my world!

Then there is a whole lot of things we can do in Common Lisp to
correct all kinds of errors, including type errors, /at run time/.
This is because we have the type information available at run time and
the static typers don't.  People should read Erik's posting

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3248291118131...@naggum.no

in this context.  That not every single one of this points applies to
every single statically typed language ever invented changes nothing
about the general validity of the argument.  Neither does the fact
that every beginner in such languages, when he finally got some hello
world program to run after three hours of fighting the type checker,
thinks ``Wow, without this cool type checker I would have had 30 bugs
in my hello world program!´´, constitute any prove that you /really/
write safer non-hello-world programs in statically typed languages.

In fact, I think the opposite is true, for a whole lot of different
reasons.

Regards,
--
Nils Gösche
"Don't ask for whom the <CTRL-G> tolls."

  That was not even what I wrote.  I think what I actually wrote would
  be far better example of how I phrased things than any paraphrase.

  Some people seem to believe that absent an explicit quantifier, they
  have the right to assume the universal quantifier and so believe it
  is fruitful to produce what they believe are counter-examples, which
  has the curiously anti-intellectual effect of making what was not
  adorned with the universal quantifier appear as though it were,
  effectively rendering further discussion impossible.  Those who are
  of the strange mental bent that sees universal quantifiers wherever
  they see disagreement and who actually believe that counter-examples
  have a place in discussions should be force-fed a course on logic
  and have their posting privileges revoked pending passing an exam.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

  Feeling better from shirking responsibility is so deeply ingrained
  into your personality that you are not even aware of it, right?

| As a sidenote, it's really amazing what amount of nonsense you read
| into my statements.

  Pot.  Kettle.  Pascal.

  This planet would be better off if people like you would at least
  consider the possibility that you are not perfect and flawless and
  that everything that goes wrong is somebody else's fault.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway