Sam Ruby meditates on type metadata
"...meta data about arguments is often very helpful," Sam writes . "In statically typed languages, this data is most useful at design time. In dynamically typed languages, this information is useful at runtime. Either way, if you want to reliably get the results you want, you need to call the correct operation with the correct data types and provide information about those data types. That doesn't mean that some languages can't accept a wider range of operands. Or even that the recipient language cares about what data type the sender thinks it is sending."
Sam also recirculates the meme from Mark Pilgrim's " erudite reader" -- that two axes of typing, strong/weak and dynamic/static, are orthogonal. Python's interesting status in this regard may help to tease apart the issues that are currently polarizing the WSDL debate. It's not simply scripting languages versus compiled languages, I don't think.
Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2002/02/24.html#a88