The definitions are controversial and somewhere (possibily in that or another MJD talk) there's a list of about 8 conflicting definition for various kinds of typing

I would like to see this list. In my mind, the basic definitions are fairly straightforward, though there are many people who muddle them together. Just think about the words themselves: "strong" and "static." Strong typing imparts strength (as opposed to weakness) to the type system, and static typing imparts staticness (as opposed to dynamism).

on this page he says "static" and "strong" typing are the same

I think that page is saying that FORTRAN's type system is both static and strong. He doesn't talk a whole lot about a distinction between strong and static typing, but if you look at the talk notes, he does say, "contrary to what you might think, Pascal is not a strongly typed language, but a weakly typed one." This is after he has described it as statically typed. So he too seems to draw a distinction between the two.

you could take "strong" to mean that conversions (casts) are impossible and "static" to mean that types are determined at compile time

That is the definition of static I would use, but I'm not so sure about the definition of strong. That is too tied to a particular concept (i.e. casts) for me. I still like my earlier definition, "strong typing means you cannot easily convert between data types," but I know it's not perfect. Obviously, people will bicker endlessly about specific details of specific type systems, but I think the general idea is pretty simple to understand.

In reply to Re^7: (OT) "Learn one new language every year"? Yeah, right. by revdiablo
in thread (OT) "Learn one new language every year"? Yeah, right. by FoxtrotUniform

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