

Do Programmers Need Seat Belts? (1996) - gnosis
http://www.dreamsongs.com/SeatBelts.html

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jmillikin
It's worth noting that since this article was written, the static-typing group
have figured out how to build interpreters/REPLs -- Haskell (via GHCi) is
probably the most well-known, but OCaml and C# also have viable interpreters.
And that's not even getting into Agda and Coq.

~~~
cdavid
It was figured out much earlier than 1996 - CAML first appeared around mid
80ies, and the theory behind type inference is more than 30 years old. I
strongly suspect someone of Richard Gabriel caliber to be aware of this in
1996.

Maybe the real difference is that computers became powerful enough to do this
kind of compilation in near real time not so long ago ?

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olalonde
Note that this article was published in 1996.
[http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=227717.227722&coll...](http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=227717.227722&coll=DL&dl=GUIDE&CFID=4912041&CFTOKEN=14336453)

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nyellin
The matching counterpoint article was also published in 1996.
<http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=227720>

