"Joachim Durchholz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Raffael Cavallaro schrieb: >> On 2006-06-14 15:04:34 -0400, Joachim Durchholz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: >> >>> Um... heterogenous lists are not necessarily a sign of expressiveness. >>> The vast majority of cases can be transformed to homogenous lists >>> (though these might then contain closures or OO objects). >>> >>> As to references to nonexistent functions - heck, I never missed these, >>> not even in languages without type inference :-) >>> >>> [[snipped - doesn't seem to relate to your answer]] >> > Give a heterogenous list that would to too awkward to live in a > statically-typed language.
Many lists are heterogenous, even in statically typed languages. For instance lisp code are lists, with several kinds of atoms and sub-lists.. A car dealer will sell cars, trucks and equipment.. In a statically typed language you would need to type the list on a common ancestor... What would then be the point of statical typing , as you stilll need to type check each element in order to process that list ? Sure you can do this in a statically-typed language, you just need to make sure some relevant ancestor exists. In my experience you'll end up with the base object-class more often than not, and that's what i call dynamic typing. > Give a case of calling nonexistent functions that's useful. I might want to test some other parts of my program before writing this function. Or maybe will my program compile that function depending on user input. As long as i get a warning for calling a non-existing function, everything is fine. Sacha -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list