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Have Static Languages Won?

pointersgonewild.com

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Re: Have Static Languages Won?

#21

Post by exo762 »

bshimmin wrote: post #13

Well, there's plenty of controversy in this one, but I think Compared to CS students, the average web developer is not as passionate about programming, and not as skilled a programmer. ...probably takes the biscuit; I'm not even sure where to start with it really, apart from my complete failure to understand how "web developers" and "CS students" are supposed to be two distinct groups which are able to be compared.

Anecdotally, on my year around 75% of students were there just because CS was supposed to bring money. They've started CS studies while not knowing how to program, knowing nothing about operating systems or caring. For them it was a 9-17 future job, nothing more.

Re: Have Static Languages Won?

#22

Post by eadz »

> Dynamic languages such as PHP, JS, Python and Ruby, in addition to being relatively poorly designed, are the languages that powered the explosion of the web

The author seems to paint a broad brush in saying all dynamic languages are poorly designed. Languages can have different design goals.

From Matz, Ruby's creator;

> Instead of emphasizing the what, I want to emphasize the how part: how we feel while programming. That's Ruby's main difference from other language designs. I emphasize the feeling, in particular, how I feel using Ruby.

( http://www.artima.com/intv/rubyP.html )

So one of Ruby's primary design goals was programmer happiness, and in that respect it isn't not poorly designed at all. The technical 'perfection' of a programming language only matters to a point, it's us as programmers people that have to speak its language all day, and optimising for how we feel doing it is a valid design goal.

I don't think it is a valid criticism to say something is poorly designed, without looking at its design goals. Every language is poorly designed in one way or another.

Re: Have Static Languages Won?

#23

Post by reacweb »

When I have started my carrier, it was unimaginable to use a dynamic language in a serious project. I was taught(!?) that the difference of development cost was very small.

The mentalities have evolved. People know that you can drastically reduce the development costs (of small projects) by using dynamic languages. We know also that maintenance is more costly.

Static languages are always improving to support features that used to exist only in dynamic languages. Dynamic languages evolve to support optional typing. The differences are reducing, but I think there is still a need for the 2 kind of languages.

Often they are combined in big projects. For example c++/javascript in browser or c++/guile.

Re: Have Static Languages Won?

#24

Post by Thiz »

In academia and corporate? Sure.

In real world? Php, Python, Ruby and Javascript still reign supreme.

Mobile is another story since main platforms are controlled by corporations, but if it were for the hobbyists neither java nor swift would have had a chance.

Re: Have Static Languages Won?

#25

Post by iheartmemcache »

idibidiart wrote: post #14
incepted wrote: post #6

They have won in theory: they are arguably better in every way than dynamically typed languages (DTL) in the sense that they offer all the advantages that used to be unique to DTL and, obviously, also all the advantages of STL (automatic refactorings, performance, ease of maintenance, etc...). Javascript is the last serious holdover of the DTL generation but even it is showing tendencies to be replaced by STL (Typesc…

Replaced? I can't see that happening in the next 5 years (an eternity in this business) Supplemented with tools like Flow? That's already a huge thing, and it's part of the React and React Native tool belt.

The whole reason Flow was invented was because Javascript was un-managable at scale without types. The whole "both" (i.e. gradual typing a la Typed Racket/Clojure/TypeScript) is probably solution. Interestingly the author has an article on that too which is a fairly good read[1].

[1] http://pointersgonewild.com/2012/11/09/static-vs-dynamic-why...

Re: Have Static Languages Won?

#26

Post by coldtea »

agentultra wrote: post #15

I hoped to have debunked, though not thoroughly, the myth that dynamic languages cannot scale to power large projects in my recent talk at Pycon CA. Just take a look at Openstack. It's powering clouds in CERN and Yahoo! Japan where it provides the infrastructure for delivering earthquake notifications to the public -- a valuable and critical service! And it's written largely in Python. It does rely on systems written…

>I hoped to have debunked, though not thoroughly, the myth that dynamic languages cannot scale to power large projects in my recent talk at Pycon CA. Just take a look at Openstack. It's powering clouds in CERN and Yahoo! Japan where it provides the infrastructure for delivering earthquake notifications to the public -- a valuable and critical service! And it's written largely in Python.

That doesn't say much in itself though. Such infrastructure for "earthquake notification" could just be a few thousand lines or even mostly "glue" code.

As you say "It does rely on systems written in static languages and is itself written in one" which kind of refutes the whole argument, doesn't it?

>It does rely on systems written in static languages and is itself written in one... but dynamic languages are very useful for a class of problem where deferring decisions about specifics until run-time is a huge advantage.

For those cases couldn't one just use a DSL or at worse an sandboxed isolated dynamic language from inside a STL talking care for the rest of the system?

There are several "business rules" systems for STL.

Re: Have Static Languages Won?

#27

Post by fulafel »

Another perspective is that dynamic application programming languages were always the underdogs. Corporate Cobol/Java/C#/C++ programmers always outnumbered application programmers in dynamic languages outside the ad-hoc web scripting languages (PHP & JS).

Clojure & other Lisps, Python, Erlang, Lua, and Ruby are all application programming languages first and web languages only incidentally (1). They all have clear strengths and are miles away from the horror of JS and PHP.

I think it shows in the article that the author's thinking on dynamic languages is colored by Javascript and its propensity to hide bugs. This is worrying since it might signal that JS does this for many people :(

(1) Admittedly Ruby is more strongly associated with Web nowadays due to Rails.

Re: Have Static Languages Won?

#28

Post by galactus »

Thiz wrote: post #24

In academia and corporate? Sure. In real world? Php, Python, Ruby and Javascript still reign supreme. Mobile is another story since main platforms are controlled by corporations, but if it were for the hobbyists neither java nor swift would have had a chance.

In what sense are academia and corporate not "the real world"?

Re: Have Static Languages Won?

#29

Post by coldtea »

realharo wrote: post #8

> You can have statically compiled languages that use type inference to realize what is effectively dynamic typing. Just because you don't have to explicitly write out the type does not make it any less static. I believe that the usual arguments against languages with static typing such as verbosity and lack of flexibility are largely eliminated by the more modern languages such as Scala, Kotlin or Typescript (though…

>Just because you don't have to explicitly write out the type does not make it any less static.

No, but not having to write the type was one of the biggest attractions of dynamic languages -- a lot of us didn't care that much for being fully dynamic, but just enjoyed the less ceremony of dynamic languages.

As for not having to commit to types for some cases, STL languages can also have a "void *" or "variant" or "dynamic" type (a la C#).

Re: Have Static Languages Won?

#30

Post by jinst8gmi »

bpicolo wrote: post #17

JavaScript, PHP, Python, and Ruby are all in the top 5 spots on GitHub. Java is the only STL that made the cut. There are certainly types of work that seem to favor dynamic languages, because they have the ability to do some interesting things. ORMs, for example, far more powerful in dynamic languages as far as I've encountered

> JavaScript, PHP, Python, and Ruby are all in the top 5 spots on GitHub.

All of which are established languages created in the 90's. It takes time for languages which are rapidly gaining mindshare to gain marketshare on GitHub.

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