Loose Typing

What exactly is meant with LooseTyping?

You got me interested in a term I first heard it from you. ... I did a subsequent lookup and from my understanding of a web page. loose typing is mid way between static and dynamic typing. The compiler does not know whether it is correct, or how to optimize, etc. However you have supplied enough information so at runtime, a family of object environments would be able to supply the functionality demanded. "Ted Neward" has been credited by several sources to have coined this term, his May03 weblog at http://www.neward.net/ted/weblog/index.jsp?month=200305 is not available (yes, it is), but you can get it from the Google cache.

No way. "Loose typing" is too obvious a term to think that it was invented by a single person, for one thing, and in any case it took me about 60 seconds to find usage that dates to 1990 -- and I'm positive it goes back considerably further than that.

Another page for reading is http://www.javablogs.com/ViewEntry.jspa?id=20185

I am no Java (nor computer language) person, so would you mind summarizing this (how it differ from Loose binding and Loose coupling) in the JavaBestPracticesDiscussed which I have created for you :)

The Neward page you cited already does so, you know, but without bothering to read that carefully, I don't think they have anything in common at all, other than the word "loose". The point is that type is different than binding is different than coupling, and it doesn't matter what kind of modifier (loose, strong, weak, purple) you put in front of those terms. So any discussion really should be about how those 3 base terms differ without a modifier.
- Doug you should have come out to help this person a week ago, then poor me would not have to feel sorry for another person caught by IT buzzwords. You know some of us gone through decades of application development without having to know what is a type, because ThereAreNoTypes as you once corrected my ProgrammerType page months ago --dl (you jogged my memory by labelling my "correction" yesterday, which I had forgotten about. My comment there was purely a joke. The notion that literally "there are no types" is simply wrong, so I certainly don't believe it -- although there are some interesting comments here and there on that page. It makes as much or as little sense as saying there are no bits, or that there are no colors. One could take a Zen or cognitive science or epistemological treatment of such claims that would make sense, but Top does no such thing. Top knows a bunch about relational databases, but he's not in a position to make authoritative statements about types. -- dm)
  - Sorry about that, I guess I was expecting the guy who wrote ThereAreNoTypes to answer :-) (Which wasn't me. Maybe it was Top.) Anyway the quick answer is that "loose typing" is largely an informal term used in opposition to "strict typing" or "strong typing"; it's not a formal jargon term with a widely-agreed upon meaning. I'm afraid that the wiki pages on types are somewhat messy, not completely comprehensive, and of course contain some differing opinions, so they could be improved (I've been thinking about some possible additions for a long time). They're not bad, though. Possibly excluding ThereAreNoTypes; actually that particular page strikes me as being potentially misleading. But it links to some of the other pages here that discuss types. TypingQuadrant is more to the point, more accurate and more clear, I think, although it still leaves things out (and no, I didn't write it, either).