Optional argument types

[Brendan Eich]

John Lenz wrote:
> that should have been "unrelated structures can look the same".

Right. Robert O'Callahan mocks this as "structural types are about field 
names, nominal types are about class names".

Clearly, "duck typing" structural protocols (iteration in ES6) have 
advantages as well as costs. Array-like is the first of this kind. We 
aren't against such things, the issue Andreas raises is the researchy 
nature of doing anything you could call a type system for a language 
such as JS -- whether structural or nominal types -- or both -- are 
included.

> I should also note that the Closure Compiler types system was based 
> off the ES4 proposal, if you want to see how things played out.

Did you include all the "like" non-type crazy?

> One thing that I have seen specifically, is that supporting "non 
> nullable" types, and distinguishing between "undefined" and "null" in 
> the type signature creates a fair amount of busy work ("type casts" to 
> remove nullability) for larger projects.

Yes, it's like const. You have to rule out null at an API boundary or 
other chokepoint, and then go non-null in the "kernel". C and C++ 
programmers do this by hand (references in C++ only help so much -- and 
they give no runtime safety).

/be