Re: Are automatic coercions ever going away?

[Andrew Starks <andrew.starks@...>]

On Fri, Aug 1, 2014 at 9:09 PM, Tim Hill <drtimhill@gmail.com> wrote:
> -- I don't think coercion is useful for programmers; we don't need it.
> -- I don't think coercion is useful for non-programmers; they don't understand it (or misunderstand it).

Yes. This is so true. Automatic coercion is great in my imagination,
as I picture what my technophobic desk and swivel chair operator will
experience as they casually try to use this program language thingy
that will solve a quick problem for them. To believe that it is a good
thing is to believe that it can be made to work in all cases for all
types, which is the requirement for a user to not need to understand
types in the first place. Nobody at the level of not grasping types
will choose to just "plows through" a language. They'll be feeling
their way through, very carefully. Automatic coercion is yet another
thing to learn and far worse, it's an exception to a new concept that
they're just learning. When that's all done, the gift is something
that is very occasionally more convenient in exchange for
every-now-and-again screwing them over.

And Coro makes a good point, too: Lua has a concat operator. That
alone lowers the chance of an auto-coercion error by a great deal, so
meh.

Tim: you can always choose not to teach them it. Of course, when they
find out, they'll wonder about other things that you might have been
keeping from them....

-Andrew