Hi Rick,

I think you're incorrect in your assesment. Though I agree that CURRENTLY, the .NET arena is either strict typed (CLR) or dynamically typed (DLR). THIS IS GOING TO CHANGE. One first indication is the attempt of david samuel (ethnologica) who intents to provide both in his product. IT will mean that you can use strict typing and gain the benefits from it, while still not losing the advantages of dynamic typing. How this all will blend together is something I still have to see.

If I'm reading correctly between the lines, MS, VB.NET, C# probably will go down this road with data in some shape or form. LINQ is the first sign where this is happening (Doing untyped queries directly agains the database), and probably will be extended.

The difficult thing for MS, is to build in runtime type checking in some key points of their language and borrowing components of the DLR to achieve that. So we likely would see this feature only in some key commands (like LINQ) and classes (ADO.NET perhaps): IOW where the program touches data.

As for the headaches with dynamic typing vs strict typing, optional compile type checking has been on my wishlist for VFP for years, and I know this was one of the features of the VFP-team to imlement in VFP.Next. People are easily mistaken that compile time checking is not possible with dynamic lanugages. The problem is that typically those language do not provide a way to do this. I know chrystof has written an article about it how to check for undeclare variables in his code which works for .FXP files but probably could be enhanced quite easily to do the same for VCX and SCX code fiels as well. Implementing this into VFPX or VFPY would be a great enhancement if you'd ask me.

I've been programming with strict typed languages from the beginning use pascal, C/C++, so I know what I'm talking about . And though I recognise that the level of type checking is way more combersome in C/C++ compared to .NET it still is a PITA to work through data (and late bound com servers) where you simple do not know the type exactly at forehand. Having to workarround in my applications which are very data intensive is just not something I'm looking forward to.

I welcome strict typing for general algorithms, though there is some comment to make here as well. WHY NOT CHECK TYPE when typing or saving the source file ???? CAN ANYONE TELL ME PLEASE. I'm I just demanding too much, or does MS thinks developpers are stupid ?? Why do I have to wait through compile time ?

Anyways, I've been through this rant before. Personally, I think the whole IT world has to evolve beyong this stupid and rigid approach of strict typing it has been practising up to now. We slowly (At least MS with .NET) are realising that the world is not black and white and we need a new level of ellegance and sophistication to take away the pain of the developers.

Walter,