Dynamic Languages are Unmaintainable
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Dynamic Languages are Unmaintainable
1–10 of 71 posts
Re: Dynamic Languages are Unmaintainable
#2The argument between dynamic and static languages has gone one for years and there's been no conclusive answer that one is better than the other.
People have written 500kloc C++ systems and they've written 500kloc of TCL.
Re: Dynamic Languages are Unmaintainable
#3The argument between dynamic and static languages has gone one for years and there's been no conclusive answer that one is better than the other. People have written 500kloc C++ systems and they've written 500kloc of TCL.
Submitter here: Yes, and some of the claims are simply factually incorrect: the original work on refactoring OO programs was done in the context of Smalltalk, the code navigation we now have in IDEs was taken from Smalltalk (in fact, Eclipse started out as Visual Age Smalltalk) etc.
So I find the post "debatable"...
Re: Dynamic Languages are Unmaintainable
#4The argument between dynamic and static languages has gone one for years and there's been no conclusive answer that one is better than the other. People have written 500kloc C++ systems and they've written 500kloc of TCL.
Submitter here: Yes, and some of the claims are simply factually incorrect: the original work on refactoring OO programs was done in the context of Smalltalk, the code navigation we now have in IDEs was taken from Smalltalk (in fact, Eclipse started out as Visual Age Smalltalk) etc. So I find the post "debatable"...
Given that the second paragraph makes factually incorrect claims about what you can detect at compile time in dynamic languages, I think "debatable" is rather kind :)
Of course, sweeping generalizations about static versus dynamic languages tend to fall flat.
Re: Dynamic Languages are Unmaintainable
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
Submitter here: Yes, and some of the claims are simply factually incorrect: the original work on refactoring OO programs was done in the context of Smalltalk, the code navigation we now have in IDEs was taken from Smalltalk (in fact, Eclipse started out as Visual Age Smalltalk) etc. So I find the post "debatable"...
Given that the second paragraph makes factually incorrect claims about what you can detect at compile time in dynamic languages, I think "debatable" is rather kind :) Of course, sweeping generalizations about static versus dynamic languages tend to fall flat.
Could you elaborate. Which claims are incorrect?
Re: Dynamic Languages are Unmaintainable
#6The argument between dynamic and static languages has gone one for years and there's been no conclusive answer that one is better than the other. People have written 500kloc C++ systems and they've written 500kloc of TCL.
Submitter here: Yes, and some of the claims are simply factually incorrect: the original work on refactoring OO programs was done in the context of Smalltalk, the code navigation we now have in IDEs was taken from Smalltalk (in fact, Eclipse started out as Visual Age Smalltalk) etc. So I find the post "debatable"...
(blog author)
Well I thought refactoring went all the way back to Forth.
I'm sure that with some language xyz it worked out very well for some project abc and that obviously disproves my whole point and you can move on...
I found writing large projects in Python - a language I was very familiar with, expert even - to become very difficult to extend aka maintain after a long time. My post should be seen in the bigger picture of the post I was following up about "Scaling My Server", and others I have written.
Re: Dynamic Languages are Unmaintainable
#7I use a strongly, statically typed functional language. Because my code has no mutable state, the type system of the program proves the program correct. So I don't have to write any tests at all and maintenance is easy.
Re: Dynamic Languages are Unmaintainable
#8The argument between dynamic and static languages has gone one for years and there's been no conclusive answer that one is better than the other. People have written 500kloc C++ systems and they've written 500kloc of TCL.
There's also a continuum of how dynamic/static languages are, both regarding the syntax itself and idiomatic code. There's a bit of a difference between e.g. Ada and C, or Python and Scheme with macros turned to 11.
And the final recommendation for Go seems a bit odd, as I wouldn't really cite that as a language with a thorough, bullet-proof type system (not saying that it isn't worth recommending, but given the context of the post...)
Re: Dynamic Languages are Unmaintainable
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Submitter here: Yes, and some of the claims are simply factually incorrect: the original work on refactoring OO programs was done in the context of Smalltalk, the code navigation we now have in IDEs was taken from Smalltalk (in fact, Eclipse started out as Visual Age Smalltalk) etc. So I find the post "debatable"...
(blog author) Well I thought refactoring went all the way back to Forth. I'm sure that with some language xyz it worked out very well for some project abc and that obviously disproves my whole point and you can move on... I found writing large projects in Python - a language I was very familiar with, expert even - to become very difficult to extend aka maintain after a long time. My post should be seen in the bigger…
Isn't "some language xyz worked out very well..." and "I found writing large projects in Python..." basically the same (anecdotal) argument?
Re: Dynamic Languages are Unmaintainable
#10I use a strongly, statically typed functional language. Because my code has no mutable state, the type system of the program proves the program correct. So I don't have to write any tests at all and maintenance is easy.
Which type system proves program correctness? A good type system can guarantee that your program doesn't suffer from certain classes of errors but that's very very far from correctness. Unless you only write programs that don't have any goal at all besides being memory safe: Behold MemSafe 2.9: it doesn't do anything at all, and most importantly, it doesn't do it in a memory safe way!