[Grace-core] Fwd: "Type Dynamic" or "Unknown Type"

[Andrew P. Black]

I wasn't at the 2.16 meeting, but I think I see why Ron has come to prefer "unknown": it means /statically/ unknown.

Unrestricted, as Kim suggested, is perhaps a little more meaningful.  The point is not that the type of the object will be unknown at runtime, but that it is not being restricted by this declaration.

A shorter term that has the same connotation is "Open", in the sense of leaving open the type of object that can be bound to the variable.

	Andrew

On 25 Nov 2013, at 19:35 , James Noble <kjx at ecs.vuw.ac.nz> wrote:

> An excerpt from a discussion that kicked off at WG2.16 in Aarhus:
> 
> is "Unknown" a better name for "type Dynamic" than "Dynamic"?
> 
> the problems are - of course - that "type Dynamic" is a "static type",
> and that no object ever has a "dynamic type" of "Dynamic" :-)
> 
> 
> so, perhaps we could consider renaming type "Dynamic" to "Unknown"
> 
> James
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
>> From: Laurence Tratt <laurie at tratt.net>
>> Subject: Re: Dynamic type
>> Date: 26 November 2013 11:31:46 AM NZDT
>> To: Ron Garcia <rxg at cs.ubc.ca>
>> Cc: James Noble <kjx at ecs.vuw.ac.nz>
>> 
>> On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 10:49:04AM -0800, Ron Garcia wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Ron,
>> 
>>> Now that the term is starting to wind down (thank heavens!) here in
>>> Vancouver, I'm hoping to work my way back into this conversation.  In the
>>> meantime, though, I did want to note that we have written up the work that
>>> I presented at the working group, and have used the terminology "unknown"
>>> throughout, rather than "dynamic".  Two things seem to come from this:  one
>>> is that I'm hoping that Laurie will be happy about it :).  The second,
>>> really interesting, thing is that I really now think that "unknown" is
>>> exactly the right word, and best expresses what our technical development
>>> is trying to conceptually analyze.  So…thanks a lot for the great
>>> conversation!  It's had an effect, not just on the terminology, but also on
>>> how I think about what I'm doing.
>> 
>> If only I could convince everyone to make me happy with their research :)
>> 
>> More seriously, I think "unknown" is a good term, and I hope it helps people
>> like me (who are outside the core gradual typing world) better understand
>> some of the cool work you are doing. I look forward to seeing what you guys
>> publish!
>> 
>> 
>> Laurie
>> -- 
>> Personal                                             http://tratt.net/laurie/
>> Software Development Team                                http://soft-dev.org/
>> https://github.com/ltratt              http://twitter.com/laurencetratt
>> 
> 
> 
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