>> >> "Consider the keywords "private" and "protected;" they literally have no effect other than to cause compile-time errors."
>>
>> Would you still consider this semantics restrictive if the default were private scope and a programmer could intentionally expose API functionality using "package," "protected," and "public"?
Actually, in C++ the default for class members is private...
It's simply a true statement that "private" generates no machine language. All it does is cause compilation to fail. Whether or not this is a good thing is a matter of opinion.
>> IMO, anonymous functions make OO-style private scope easy and implicit, without feeling like a limitation on the programmer.
If you're speaking of lexical closures, I think you're right. You don't need to declare variables as private, because you can use the rules of scoping to make them impossible to refer to. You can achieve the same thing with a simpler syntax and more succinct code.
>> I believe you're assuming a program must run Turing-complete computations at run time. While Turing-completeness is an extremely common feature of programming languages, not all languages encourage it, especially not if their type system is used for theorem proving.
I'm not assuming that programming languages must be Turing complete. It happens to be true of all general-purpose languages that are in common use today.
>> Functional programming with guaranteed termination is known as total FP. "Epigram [a total FP language] has more static information than we know what to do with." http://strictlypositive.org/publications.html
I'll take a look at that language. I think that in 50 years' time, we might all be using non-Turing-complete languages. Making a language Turing complete is the easiest way to ensure that it can solve any problem, but isn't necessarily the best way.
( Technically, a language has to be Turing complete to solve literally any problem, but my hunch is that all problems of practical utility can be solved without resorting to a Turing machine.)
