This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: Not Weak Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants

I need an FAQ.... Ryan Lowe confuses strong typing with declarative typing:

Paul Vicks makes a good point when he says that generics make strongly typed languages even stronger, and this seems to go straight against the new wave of weakly typed languages like Python and older ones like Smalltalk.

Sigh. Smalltalk is dynamically, and stongly typed. You cannot get a type error in Smalltalk; if you send a message that is inappropriate, you get a well defined exception (which can be handled). We don't lie to the compiler either (Casting, anyone?). He later asks what the advantages are, pointing to some nice refactoring capabilities of Eclipse. The advantage is that I can define objects in ways that make sense - and have them conform to a specific protocol API. The advantage is that I don't end up with overflow situations because someone decided that 65,535 of something was all I'd ever need. I don't wind up with essentially random types being assigned to objects, just because some type has to be assigned... which makes the whole system more flexible.