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Diminishing returns of static typing

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Re: Diminishing returns of static typing

#81

Post by sacado2 »

cm2187 wrote: post #3

The benefit of static typing isn't just reliability. Tooling is another major argument. Won't appeal to certain hardcore programmers who think that even notepad has too many features. But it is great for refactoring, finding all references to a function or a property or navigating through the code at design time. Basically all the features visual studio excels at for .net languages. And I disagree with the barrier to…

There's not only tooling and reliability. Don't forget performance, too. Knowing at runtime that a memory word represents, for instance, an integer rather than a reference to a struct that contains both a type tag and a reference to the actual value, makes a huge difference. And I'm not even mentioning the inlining possibilities.

Re: Diminishing returns of static typing

#82

Post by chr1 »

19873287234 wrote: post #46
drblast wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. Static typing lets you turn the compiler into a hard-working friend that helps you refactor large projects without going insane. There are no diminishing returns. Defining types is easy and enhances code readability.

I really don't think it does that. Most refactoring is not like that. It is about changing things at a deeper level than just the type. I don't think they enhance code readability - I think they make it worse. I never look at the type when I am reading code, it just gets in the way.

When using languages with static typing amount of refactoring of that type is disproportionately large, so people notice how much the ide helps, without noticing that most of the help wouldn't be even necessary without the complexity added by static types.

Re: Diminishing returns of static typing

#83

Post by wiremine »

macspoofing wrote: post #60
cm2187 wrote: post #3

The benefit of static typing isn't just reliability. Tooling is another major argument. Won't appeal to certain hardcore programmers who think that even notepad has too many features. But it is great for refactoring, finding all references to a function or a property or navigating through the code at design time. Basically all the features visual studio excels at for .net languages. And I disagree with the barrier to…

I'm so happy to see the pendulum swing the other way, because when JavaScript was becoming popular, and Ruby and Python had a popularity renaissance (around mid to late 2000s), I had a lot of online arguments about the value of static typing. People were complaining about static typing for the dumbest reasons (it's too 'wordy'). It started as a backlash against old-school enterprise Java development (which was fair,…

> EJB2.0 world sucked

This is the #1 reason I leaned away from static typing. Typescript and Swift have changed my mind. I now see typing as a helpful tool that can solve a lot of problems.

Re: Diminishing returns of static typing

#84

Post by seasoup »

I really enjoyed how the analysis shows that different developers can have different equally valid opinions on this topic. It's where you place your values and preferences of programming, modified by what you are programming. The failure state of a cat photo sharing web app likely isn't as dramatic or important as that of a financial system or driverless car code. Great article.

Re: Diminishing returns of static typing

#85

Post by igouy »

fulafel wrote: post #9
cm2187 wrote: post #3

The benefit of static typing isn't just reliability. Tooling is another major argument. Won't appeal to certain hardcore programmers who think that even notepad has too many features. But it is great for refactoring, finding all references to a function or a property or navigating through the code at design time. Basically all the features visual studio excels at for .net languages. And I disagree with the barrier to…

Dynamic languages support this kind of tooling too - you can even have seamless data completion (eg. map/dictionary keys). The original Refactoring Browser was written for Smalltalk. Etc. Of course there are cases where dynamic languages do worse, but it balances out I think.

> The original Refactoring Browser was written for Smalltalk.

Unless you think original means Bill Opdyke's thesis work, where the tooling was written for C++ and written in CLOS.

http://www.laputan.org/pub/papers/opdyke-thesis.pdf

Re: Diminishing returns of static typing

#86

Post by nwellinghoff »

Time and time again I can make a well written functioning program in Java or C# at least twice as fast than using js and brothers. Sure it might have more "lines". Who freaking cares. My team and I square off all the time. "K, you use node I will use java" And the Java dev always wins. Its just so much faster, cleaner and mature. Its NO CONTEST.

Re: Diminishing returns of static typing

#87

Post by sacado2 »

drblast wrote: post #31
cm2187 wrote: post #3

The benefit of static typing isn't just reliability. Tooling is another major argument. Won't appeal to certain hardcore programmers who think that even notepad has too many features. But it is great for refactoring, finding all references to a function or a property or navigating through the code at design time. Basically all the features visual studio excels at for .net languages. And I disagree with the barrier to…

Definitely. Static typing lets you turn the compiler into a hard-working friend that helps you refactor large projects without going insane. There are no diminishing returns. Defining types is easy and enhances code readability.

Defining types is easy and enhances code readability until you go too far. Some type declarations in Haskell or highly templated C++ are hard to read.

Re: Diminishing returns of static typing

#88

Post by fny »

There's one huge benefit to static typing people often forget: self documentation.

While, yes, top-quality dynamic code will have documentation and test cases to make up for this deficiency, it's often still not good enough for me to get my answer without spelunking the source or StackOverflow.

I feel like I learned this the hard way over the years after having to deal with my own code. Without types, I spend nearly twice as long to familiarize myself with whatever atrocity I committed.

Re: Diminishing returns of static typing

#89

Post by lopatin »

namelost wrote: post #40
mattnewton wrote: post #15

I just don’t buy that go is some sort of sweet spot because it doesn’t have generics. Generics pretty much exist for maps and slices, because they are needed in real programs. The language designers just don’t let you make your own generic collections.

Yeah far from finding a sweet spot, Go exists in some kind of type system ghetto, because its type system is so crippled users have to resort to code generation (go generate). Neither Python nor Java programmers have to do that.

Yeah Go is weird in that its static type system doesn't to provide you with great static typing power but instead it's just there as a sort-of sanity checker. If there's logic, they say write it with data structures and functions. Have invariants? Enforce them yourself.

If Go is annoying with how little power it provides, that's fair, but other type systems can be just as annoying then, because when given the ability to, type astronauts will blast off into space, purely as a matter of honor or instinct.

Besides, code generation isn't all that bad. Java programmers will eventually find some kind of code generation in their build setup (serialization/schema tools).

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