[erlang-questions] Why isn't erlang strongly typed?

Kostis Sagonas kostis@REDACTED
Thu Oct 23 01:11:53 CEST 2008


Richard O'Keefe wrote:
> On 22 Oct 2008, at 3:18 am, Steve Davis wrote:
> 
> There have been several attempts to provide type systems
> for Erlang.  It took a long time to get one that was
> found to be satisfactory in practice, but it's there now
> in documentation and in the Dialyzer and Typerl.
> 
> However, even that system is not as expressive as one
> might wish.

Indeed it isn't.  However, one of the nice properties of types is that 
they can always become stronger and more expressive.  One of the 
problems in doing it though is agreeing in which ways to make them 
stronger.  After all, with sufficiently strong types one can describe 
pretty much any property one wishes.

Kostis



More information about the erlang-questions mailing list