Jon Udell wrote: Perhaps this explains why I have the sense that if optional type declaration were going happen in any major scripting environment, it would happen first in Python.

My bets are on ECMAScript (perhaps better known as JavaScript), but then again, one could say that I have inside knowledge...

  5:23:08 PM    

Christian Riege wrote: Don't want to end up with the good 'ole "everything is public" model here, do we?

In many cases, everything is public is the wrong default.  For an example, take a look at the XML coffee cup.  Look at all the overhead the wrong default causes in this example.  Not to mention all the parenthesis.

If you want a good example of a lot of overhead, select "view->source" in the browser while you are on this page.

  5:03:35 PM    

Simon Fell writes: Sjoerd's example doesn't specify the namespace URI, come on guys post some thing that's (a) equivilent to the other examples, (b) is callable by the sample client code. Some of those lines of overhead are nothing to do with web services but just the fact that C# is a OO language.

Dave does have a point.  In a very real sense, the only logic in this example is:

"Hello " + name

One could imagine a system in which this information, placed in a file named "/webservice/Hello/sayHello" would do everything necessary to be callable by the sample client code.

  3:39:40 PM    

Mayra knew nothing about the software that figured out how to melt the steel in that Slinky or the satellite tracking of the truck carrying the steel to the Slinky factory or the Internet tools that let the manufacturer monitor sales at big retail chains.

  2:39:54 PM    

Dave Winer asks: Look at all the overhead. ... what are all those magic incantations about?

In that sample code, there are three lines of overhead.  Having worked closely with a number of SOAP implementations, I can explain each.

• Since ASP.Net is designed to be language neutral, they needed a mechanism to determine the programming language and intended class name.
• I cover the reason why a namespace must be declared here.
• The final line deals with the issue of defaults.  In many object oriented languages you may have methods which are public or private.  In the web services world, there is a third choice: published.  The default in ASP.Net is that methods are not published.  From a security perspective, this default makes sense.

  12:23:10 PM