Thomas,

I'm still not sure what you're saying. If you declare your object types at the beginning of the procedure (as you'll have to do for intellisense anyways), the only difficulty might be that a dynamically created object might actually be of a different type. You can view that as disadvantage, but you can also see it as a advantage. For example creating a com interface for office is not version specific this way. In .NET you'll either program for a specific version or have to go through reflection (please correct me if I'm wrong here). Again this problem can be solved in dynamic languages by optional type checking anyways (eg, CREATEOBJECTEX()), it is just that you'll have to include more type checking mechanisms in the language for the purpose of type checking.

Bottom line is that it is possible to include type checking as good as static type languages but with the posibility to have dynamic type checking for where you wish to. That there need to be extra provisions in the dynamic language to do so (we did not have the typing mechanism in the LOCAL statement until VFP8), actually is besides the point.

Walter,

>>Not sure whether I do understand you here. Why is type checking in dynamic langugage much more difficult *if* the type is specified at the declaration at the top ?
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>because there are many kinds of dynamics at work - there is a reason interfaces were established in COM <g>.
>Most (if not all) current scripting languages object creation is analogous to a simple factory pattern in the strict/single inheritance world. Then you have python, were all variables are name bindings pointing to objects and the usual properties (from vfp OOP-model speak) are divided into class and instance variables - setting instance variables is a behaviour I view to be nearer to vfp's addobject() than .Net/java field and property mechanisms (Gary: this was the reason I cc'ed you - I have not used Ironpython, but I guess it follows the normal CPython ways). You can exchange/overwrite name bindings for functions and methods at runtime, also via indirect factory patterns - some of the things I read are much harder to follow as the level of creativity (spoken with ironic emphasis, as this is not always good in enterprize dev <bg>) is MUCH higher.
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>regards
>
>thomas