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From: Don Syme <dsyme@microsoft.com>
To: "'Jacques GARRIGUE'" <garrigue@kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp>, fessant@pa.dec.com
Cc: caml-list@inria.fr
Subject: RE: Objects contrib: new URL ...
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 04:41:01 -0700
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> So I weaken my statement: casts are not an absolute evil which should
> not be allowed at all, but at least they should be hard to use, enough
> to encourage people to choose other methods when possible.

I'm not in favour of the extensive use of casts, but this 
sounds like the kind of reasoning that was behind SML's syntax for
references and imperative programming, which makes the imperative features
of SML very hard to use.  The problem is that when you really do need to use
casts in an
application, e.g. in window programming, then you'll probably need to use
them a fair bit,
so an awkward syntax could be quite problematic.

Don