What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

Andreas Rossberg rossberg at ps.uni-sb.de
Wed Jun 21 12:50:35 EDT 2006

Vesa Karvonen wrote:
>>>Indeed, the ability to declare a new type that has the exact same 
>>>underlying representation and isomorphically identical operations but 
>>>not be the same type is something I find myself often missing in 
>>>languages. It's nice to be able to say "this integer represents vertical 
>>>pixel count, and that represents horizontal pixel count, and you don't 
>>>get to add them together."
>>Not counting C/C++, I don't know when I last worked with a typed 
>>language that does *not* have this ability... (which is slightly 
>>different from ADTs, btw)
> Would Java count?

Yes, you are right. And there certainly are more in the OO camp.

But honestly, I do not remember when I last had to actively work with 
one of them, including Java... :-)

- Andreas

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