Re: Soft Types System Proposal

[Asger Ottar Alstrup <aalstrup@...>]

Jeff Koftinoff wrote:
[Using a test harness instead of type checking]

A test harness is code, just like code itself is. There will be as many 
problems in the test suite as in the code itself. Therefore, your aim is to 
make sure that the complete system, considering both the code and the 
tests, is as simple as possible.

I believe that type checking is an efficient way to test many things, and 
thus an efficient way to express many of your tests. By your logic, syntax 
errors might as well be delayed until runtime as well. I do not agree that 
this is a productive approach. It takes two seconds to compile a file, 
while running a test suite can take minutes. I believe that the sooner 
problems are found, the better.

Regards,
Asger Ottar Alstrup