CompuServe Messages

"If you honestly disagree with… my contention that a language should either check types all the time or not at all, then tell me the reason for your disagreement." Surely. IT DOESN'T MATTER. If you are letting a language do all your casting for you, then the program is not self-documented at the lowest level; you must look back to the variable declarations to figure out what is being done where. Case in point: FORTRAN does casts automatically. That doesn't stop XYBASE=REAL(COORD)*100.0 from being clearer than XYBASE=COORD*100.0 if COORD is defined as INTEGER. I always cast explicitly in FORTRAN too, just like C. At the other end of the spectrum, if a language doesn't do ANY casting for you, you MUST by definition cast everything. What it comes down to is that, for my outlook and coding style, it doesn't matter whether a language casts fully, partially, or not at all. A piece of code written for understandability and maintainability has everything spelled out. Please note once more that I am not disagreeing with your contention that C is not right FOR YOU. Further, I really can't argue on your grounds, since I've not used Modula or Pascal. I am merely trying to keep you aware of the fact that a lot of what you are labeling as inherent problems with the language are based on your approach TO the language.