Shorten type "Dynamic" to "Any"

[DartBot]

This issue was originally filed by @seaneagan

---

"Any" has the obvious advantage of being shorter, and seems no less descriptive.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by [email protected]

---

Removed Type-Defect label.
Added Type-Enhancement, Area-Language, Triaged labels.

[rakudrama]

I think "Any" is more descriptive. "Dynamic" implies other things are not dynamic, whereas they are simply more constrained.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by [email protected]

---

I worry that Any sounds too much like Object, in that it sounds like it's the root of the type system. People might think that Any is just a synonym for Object, and think that its purpose is to hold any value, just like Object can hold any value.
But, what Any/Dynamic really means is disable static checking for a particular variable, so I think calling it Dynamic makes sense and is a useful mnemonic.
Perhaps calling it something like "Loose" or "Unchecked" would work as well if people don't like "Dynamic", but I think it needs to be something that conveys the loosey-goosey nature of the variable.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by [email protected]

---

Another word that might work well is "Wild". It's short, and also clearly conveys that the difference from Object is that variables of type Wild are not subject to any static checking.

[gbracha]

Set owner to @gbracha.
Added Accepted label.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by @seaneagan

---

A couple more options to consider:

'_'
'None'
'Free'

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by [email protected]

---

The word "Unknown" appears multiple times in the Language specification to describe Dynamic. "The type Dynamic denotes the unknown type.". The language specification tells you what the keyword should be.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by @seaneagan

---

Of course Object#dynamic should be renamed to match the new type name as well.

However, I wonder if generic type casting syntax would be better:

(Dynamic) expression

which allows casting to any type, not just Dynamic.

[anders-sandholm]

The right solution is to use 'var' instead of 'Dynamic' as suggested in issue #2050.

---

Added WontFix label.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by [email protected]

---

'dynamic' implies to me something happening at 'runtime'. Whereas in fact at runtime (production mode) type annotations are not used at all.
'any' actually does clearly imply to me - "I really don't care about static type info for this binding".

Also with 'any' i can build a mental model of how the type system works:

var x; // typed to any
var x = 2; // typed to int

But if I really want x to be bind to other non-int values at some later point in the code i would declare x as follows:

any x = 2; // typed to any
x = "hello world"; // no static error

'any' - hits the sweet spot between succinct but readable - while enabling developers to build a mental model of how the semantics hang together.

N.B - any should anyways be used rarely. Only if the developer really wants a duck type.