From: Jakub Hegenbart <kyosuke@...>
Date: 2005-12-11T08:08:03+09:00
Subject: Re: lib for optional static typing

Bill Atkins wrote:
> Common Lisp supports something like that.  All values are dynamically
> typed by default (as in Ruby), but typing can be added to specific
> areas where you need it.  The user can decide whether to have the
> typing used only as a compiler hint to get faster code, and/or to have
> it enforced so that an error will be signaled when an attempt is made
> to store an object of the wrong type into that variable.
Well, personally, I really like Common Lisp and its approach. But 
concerning compiler hints...what about the Stalin Scheme compiler? I 
recently started studying compiler techniques it uses and it almost 
convinced me that there _is_ such a thing as the legendary "sufficiently 
smart compiler". :-) I'm just wondering, if there is such a thing for 
Scheme, would Ruby also benefit from such a kind of compiler? Such a 
dynamic object model that Ruby uses is quite a beast to tame, on the 
other hand, the optimizations that Stalin performs are nothing short of 
a miracle. ;-)

Jakub