#676 Strict type option on by default

[arakov]

While implementing a new feature - #676 Strict type option - I'm curious what people think about is it must be by default on.

In short being a dynamic language, it is possible to send a message even if we know that the class does not handle it now.

For example the compiler will warn that the following code may lead to an exception:

A;

public program()
{
   A a := new A();

   a.test();
}

The result of the compilation will be:

ELENA Command-line compiler 6.5.103 (C)2005-2024 by Aleksey Rakov, ELENA-LANG Org

Project: sandbox, Platform: Win_x86, Target type: STA Console
Cleaning up
Parsing sandbox.l
Compiling sandbox
sandbox.l(7:6): warning 407: Message 'test' does not handled by the object
.
saving sandbox

Successfully compiled
Linking..
Successfully linked

And this is an expected behavior, we cannot guarantee that someone will not override the class A and add a support for this method. But it is worth to warn in case it is an miss spelling.

But there are situation when we know it exactly, if the class is sealed.

E.g. if we change the code like this:

sealed A;

public program()
{
   A a := new A();

   a.test();
}

In this case the class A cannot be inherited so the message will never handle directly.

So starting from 6.5 version a new option - Strict type enforcing is introduced. If the compile the code like this:

elena-cli.exe sandbox.l -xs

the compiler will generate an error:

ELENA Command-line compiler 6.5.103 (C)2005-2024 by Aleksey Rakov, ELENA-LANG Org

Project: sandbox, Platform: Win_x86, Target type: STA Console
Strict type enforcing is on
Cleaning up
Parsing sandbox.l
Compiling sandbox
sandbox.l(7:6): error 185: Message 'test' does not handled by the object
Compiled with errors

So my question is do this behavior must be default? What do you think?