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Shifting C# Toward Dynamic Typing
COM expects that the languages that use it (like VB Classic and C++) will
have dynamic types. This made developing for Microsoft Office difficult for
C# programmers, which was exactly opposite of what Microsoft wanted to
happen. The end result? The dynamic type.
Shifting C# Toward Dynamic Typing
So-called “dynamic languages” are a trend that keeps coming back, like ruf-
fled tux shirts. Dynamic languages are languages that allow for loose typing,
rather than static. The concept got started in the 1960s with LISP. Dynamic
languages came back in the late 1980s for two reasons: network management
scripting and the artificial intelligence craze. Thanks to the Web, the buzz-
word is back yet again.
The World Wide Web, for those of you who aren’t old enough to remem-
ber, was built on View Source and dynamic languages. Microsoft’s original
Web development language, Active Server Pages, was built on VBScript — a
dynamic language.
The Web is better with a dynamic programming environment, so the trend
is probably here to stay this time (until the next big thing, anyway). C# isn’t
the only language that is adding dynamic language features, and dynamic
type isn’t the only language feature that has been added to make it more
appealing for Web programmers.
Several dynamic languages have been around for a while, like these:
✦ Perl
✦ Visual Basic
✦ Smalltalk
✦ LISP
✦ Scheme
While some of these aren’t as popular as they once were, they are still out
there and have pushed the trend in the newer languages. You can see this
trend in all the new or refurbished dynamic languages that have popped up
over the last ten years. Many of them have roots in the Web, while others
are being newly used for the Web:
✦ PHP
✦ Ruby
✦ JavaScript
✦ Cold Fusion
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