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Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

elixir-lang.org

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Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#181

Post by citizenpaul »

replwoacause wrote: post #169
teleforce wrote: post #163

Honest question, in the era of vibe and AI assisted coding is there any advantages of using untyped programming languages, apart from the fact that non-typed languages has more traning data for the LLM? This probably controversial, but personally I consider untyped languages as technical debts that need to be fixed sooner or later, and the OP article is partly addressing this very issue. Rewriting critical software i…

I've used untyped languages extensively, and even built my own, and the errors I get at runtime are almost never type-based, and that's even more true now that LLMs can pump out code. For all the additional ceremony types add, I can't say I've personally realized their benefit.

I thought a big part of the reason for type systems was a sort of self documentation/contract? Especially if you need to work on an unfamiliar system with bad documentation. Also what about system boundaries? I prefer typed languages personally.

Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#182

Post by dnautics »

teleforce wrote: post #163

Honest question, in the era of vibe and AI assisted coding is there any advantages of using untyped programming languages, apart from the fact that non-typed languages has more traning data for the LLM? This probably controversial, but personally I consider untyped languages as technical debts that need to be fixed sooner or later, and the OP article is partly addressing this very issue. Rewriting critical software i…

> is there any advantages of using untyped programming language

without any evidence, i claim the corpus might have higher quality variable names and conventions that are "human crutches" around not having types.

LLM knowledge in your non public codebase must be strictly local, and so checking on details and identities of types incurs a cost for the LLM to go fetch that info. if the LLM can "just know" (guess with very high confidence) then thats better for the LLM.

> non-typed languages has more traning data

as per anthropic "poisoning llms with 250 examples" finding, i suspect that corpus size does not really matter that much for any language that is reasonably well used.

Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#183

Post by dnautics »

josevalim wrote: post #99
dnautics wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think the design can push people into writing unnecessary matches/guards just to trigger the typechecker. that said, I'm a fan

That can be a concern indeed but it is worth noting that strong arrows compose/propagate. So if you have a function without guards that calls a function that guards on said types, the caller is also strong! We will likely have mechanisms to measure "strength" when we introduce type annotations.

very cool. would be even cooler if you could disguise type annotations as dialyzer annotations :P

Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#184

Post by mountainriver »

lijok wrote: post #166
teleforce wrote: post #163

Honest question, in the era of vibe and AI assisted coding is there any advantages of using untyped programming languages, apart from the fact that non-typed languages has more traning data for the LLM? This probably controversial, but personally I consider untyped languages as technical debts that need to be fixed sooner or later, and the OP article is partly addressing this very issue. Rewriting critical software i…

People no can Rust so people no use Rust. Simple as.

I’m so happy with switching all my dev over to rust since AI coding. Everyone is lighting fast and super reliable

Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#185

Post by mountainriver »

teleforce wrote: post #163

Honest question, in the era of vibe and AI assisted coding is there any advantages of using untyped programming languages, apart from the fact that non-typed languages has more traning data for the LLM? This probably controversial, but personally I consider untyped languages as technical debts that need to be fixed sooner or later, and the OP article is partly addressing this very issue. Rewriting critical software i…

IMO all of these higher level languages that were designed for humans have a very short lifespan at this point.

The only thing propping them up seems to be loyalty for the most part.

Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#186

Post by asa400 »

teleforce wrote: post #163

Honest question, in the era of vibe and AI assisted coding is there any advantages of using untyped programming languages, apart from the fact that non-typed languages has more traning data for the LLM? This probably controversial, but personally I consider untyped languages as technical debts that need to be fixed sooner or later, and the OP article is partly addressing this very issue. Rewriting critical software i…

This framing is misleading. I'm not sure what AI has to do with any of the examples you cited. All of the examples you cited are moves - and in some cases, not even moves, as Shopify is not ditching Ruby - to more performant runtimes and architectures in response to operational concerns at scale, which have a tenuous link to language, and no link to AI that I can see, as these companies all significantly predate LLMs.

Ruby's runtime in the early 2000's compared poorly against the JVM or the BEAM. People used Ruby then and now because it worked well to get products to market quickly. Even after a ton of investment in Ruby's implementation, the JVM and the BEAM are still better able to handle the types of high-traffic, high-concurrency workloads those companies serve, which makes them relevant to mature, high-scale companies.

Tellingly, there are dynamic language implementations that are performance-competitive with static language implementations, like Javascript's V8/Bun/Deno, Lua's LuaJIT, and Common Lisp's SBCL (among others, this is not an exclusive list).

Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#187

Post by asa400 »

josevalim wrote: post #99
dnautics wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think the design can push people into writing unnecessary matches/guards just to trigger the typechecker. that said, I'm a fan

That can be a concern indeed but it is worth noting that strong arrows compose/propagate. So if you have a function without guards that calls a function that guards on said types, the caller is also strong! We will likely have mechanisms to measure "strength" when we introduce type annotations.

Is it fair to think of this as the ability for type information to be propagated in both directions, e.g. both up and down the callstack? So callees down the callstack may receive any type information the caller might have, while callers up the stack may also receive any information callees further down the stack might have? Please correct me if my understanding of what you wrote is way off base!

Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#188

Post by galaxyLogic »

meghprkh wrote: post #172
teleforce wrote: post #163

Honest question, in the era of vibe and AI assisted coding is there any advantages of using untyped programming languages, apart from the fact that non-typed languages has more traning data for the LLM? This probably controversial, but personally I consider untyped languages as technical debts that need to be fixed sooner or later, and the OP article is partly addressing this very issue. Rewriting critical software i…

Not necessarily. Since the word "typed" language is not well-defined. For example, typescript is a fantastic language for marshalling data and UI state since it uses substructural typing instead of nominal typing. Libraries like kysely / other ORM libraries are great examples too and easy to use, whereas in fully typed languages like Rust you would end up having to use a macro library like sqlx or having to define st…

As I understand it TypeScript does not enforce types at runtime. Am I correct? If so that would signify to me it is not a "typed language", like say Java for instance. Types in TypeScript are more like "annotations" for docujmenting the program. Am I correct?

Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#189

Post by freedomben »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #102
freedomben wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Java you need a JRE and JDK depending on whether you're just running or also building. That they are bundled (for Windows) is slightly convenient, but they're not bundled on Linux so what you're saying is OS dependent

JRE or JDK, not "and". The JDK is a superset of the JRE.

Thank you, appreciate the correction

Re: Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language

#190

Post by dnautics »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #188
meghprkh wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. Since the word "typed" language is not well-defined. For example, typescript is a fantastic language for marshalling data and UI state since it uses substructural typing instead of nominal typing. Libraries like kysely / other ORM libraries are great examples too and easy to use, whereas in fully typed languages like Rust you would end up having to use a macro library like sqlx or having to define st…

As I understand it TypeScript does not enforce types at runtime. Am I correct? If so that would signify to me it is not a "typed language", like say Java for instance. Types in TypeScript are more like "annotations" for docujmenting the program. Am I correct?

its statically typed, but not runtime typed!
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