[plt-scheme] Why do folks implement *dynamically* typed languages?

On May 31, 2007, at 11:37 AM, Grant Rettke wrote:

> I think that at some point the fellow who created Ruby said to himself
> that "I'm going to create a programming language where you can't
> detect type errors at compile for these reasons...".
>
> What I want to know is if there are common reasons, or no reasons, or
> do people write papers about making this decision?

It is quite difficult to publish language design papers (with reasons  
like the above) in academic circles. So if you mean an academic  
research paper, the answer is likely to be 'no'.

PLT has succeeded in being both a scripting language and a vehicle  
for academic research. To accomplish the latter, we turn our designs  
into models and explore properties of models so that other language  
community can adapt our ideas. This is NOT the kind of paper that  
just says "I didn't think errors should be discovered at compile time".

People may write essays/non-academic papers on this stuff and publish  
them in magazines like Byte or third-tier CS journals like Computer  
Languages. These days they may publish them on the web only and call  
them a blog.

Time and again, you will see flamewars on newsgroups and mailing  
lists. If you're careful, you can extract good knowledge from such  
exchanges though 3/4 of the stuff is useless.

If you discover something of interest, please post. I think people  
here will want to know.

-- Matthias