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End users absolutely care when the program or service is slow, unstable, drains your battery, is constantly offline, or has major security flaws. Now there is

End users absolutely care when the program or service is slow, unstable, drains your battery, is constantly offline, or has major security flaws. Now there is no guarantee that a dynamic language will have those issues more than a static language, but I for one sleep better at night knowing my compiler is doing so much more work for me.

mythz 9y ago
> End users absolutely care when the program or service is slow A Ruby API with a good caching strategy is faster than a C/C++ binary with none and it's much easier to implement sophisticated caching strategies in dynamic languages. > unstable, drains your battery, is constantly offline Servers don't drain battery. Unstable, constantly offline has no correlation and is not limited to dynamic languages > but I for one sleep better at night knowing my compiler is doing so much more work for me. Right, choose whatever helps you sleep at night, but your language/tech choices isn't always what helps everyone else sleep.
- jjnoakes 9y ago
  A static language is less likely to throw a runtime type error, or coerce some value incorrectly, than a dynamic language. That does correlate with being unstable and offline. Servers don't drain battery, but they cost money, so inefficiency matters server-side as well. And comparing a fully-featured dynamic language implementation with a less-featured implementation in a fairly weak statically typed language isn't really a productive comparison, is it.
  - mythz 9y ago
    No bad developers create unstable software that's slow and offline all the time, not dynamic languages. The largest Internet sites were built on dynamic languages, they wouldn't have achieved their market position if they were slow, unstable or offline all the time - it's amateur hour to think it has any correlation with being implemented in a dynamic language. Again a good caching strategy makes every language fast and in the law of large numbers scalability is more important that script execution performance. Servers of failed Startups also consume less energy then successful ones - another great example for spending precious dev cycles optimizing on the wrong thing.
    - jjnoakes 9y ago
      Mose developers are average developers. If I have an average developer writing my mvp or adding user-defined features, I'd rather have a static type system to save them time. Otherwise they have to write more tests or fly by the seat of their pants, which may lead to all the issues I raised. Just because successful companies use dynamic languages doesn't mean dynamic languages produce successful companies. And plenty of those companies had plenty of scaling issues and growing pains that just throwing a cache in front of didn't solve. Dynamic languages are only faster to develop in because they are more ubiquitous and familiar, not because they inherently decrease the time it takes to write software. And if you get to that point, where time is no longer a factor, then choosing dynamic just leaves more opportunities for inefficiency and runtine errors.
      - mythz 9y ago
        Your preferences helps you, other developers have their own language and tooling preferences they choose to help make them more productive. > Just because successful companies use dynamic languages doesn't mean dynamic languages produce successful companies. Talented resources is usually an ingredient that's shared amongst most successful companies and there is no shortage of talented developers preferring dynamic languages. Dynamic languages like python are also extremely popular in complicated fields like science, AI and machine learning, etc. > And plenty of those companies had plenty of scaling issues and growing Inefficient software can be written in any language and scaling issues are more often the result of poor architecture and unoptimal implementation than language performance. A successful company with growing pains is also more valuable than a failed company without. > Dynamic languages are only faster to develop in because they are more ubiquitous and familiar, not because they inherently decrease the time it takes to write software. That's incredibly naive. Developer iteration times are much faster in dynamic languages, tools that enable live programming, Hot reloading, faster run/build cycles have a direct impact on developer productivity and are commonly born from dynamic languages. A rich developer ecosystem is also an important factor in being able to quickly adopt well-written tested and hardened libraries which popular dynamic languages have aplenty which is a direct result of being able to attract a large pool of talented developers, languages that can do this are more popular than ones that don't, irrespective of their type systems.

mythz 9y ago

> End users absolutely care when the program or service is slow A Ruby API with a good caching strategy is faster than a C/C++ binary with none and it's much easier to implement sophisticated caching strategies in dynamic languages. > unstable, drains your battery, is constantly offline Servers don't drain battery. Unstable, constantly offline has no correlation and is not limited to dynamic languages > but I for one sleep better at night knowing my compiler is doing so much more work for me. Right, choose whatever helps you sleep at night, but your language/tech choices isn't always what helps everyone else sleep.

jjnoakes 9y ago
A static language is less likely to throw a runtime type error, or coerce some value incorrectly, than a dynamic language. That does correlate with being unstable and offline. Servers don't drain battery, but they cost money, so inefficiency matters server-side as well. And comparing a fully-featured dynamic language implementation with a less-featured implementation in a fairly weak statically typed language isn't really a productive comparison, is it.
- mythz 9y ago
  No bad developers create unstable software that's slow and offline all the time, not dynamic languages. The largest Internet sites were built on dynamic languages, they wouldn't have achieved their market position if they were slow, unstable or offline all the time - it's amateur hour to think it has any correlation with being implemented in a dynamic language. Again a good caching strategy makes every language fast and in the law of large numbers scalability is more important that script execution performance. Servers of failed Startups also consume less energy then successful ones - another great example for spending precious dev cycles optimizing on the wrong thing.
  - jjnoakes 9y ago
    Mose developers are average developers. If I have an average developer writing my mvp or adding user-defined features, I'd rather have a static type system to save them time. Otherwise they have to write more tests or fly by the seat of their pants, which may lead to all the issues I raised. Just because successful companies use dynamic languages doesn't mean dynamic languages produce successful companies. And plenty of those companies had plenty of scaling issues and growing pains that just throwing a cache in front of didn't solve. Dynamic languages are only faster to develop in because they are more ubiquitous and familiar, not because they inherently decrease the time it takes to write software. And if you get to that point, where time is no longer a factor, then choosing dynamic just leaves more opportunities for inefficiency and runtine errors.
    - mythz 9y ago
      Your preferences helps you, other developers have their own language and tooling preferences they choose to help make them more productive. > Just because successful companies use dynamic languages doesn't mean dynamic languages produce successful companies. Talented resources is usually an ingredient that's shared amongst most successful companies and there is no shortage of talented developers preferring dynamic languages. Dynamic languages like python are also extremely popular in complicated fields like science, AI and machine learning, etc. > And plenty of those companies had plenty of scaling issues and growing Inefficient software can be written in any language and scaling issues are more often the result of poor architecture and unoptimal implementation than language performance. A successful company with growing pains is also more valuable than a failed company without. > Dynamic languages are only faster to develop in because they are more ubiquitous and familiar, not because they inherently decrease the time it takes to write software. That's incredibly naive. Developer iteration times are much faster in dynamic languages, tools that enable live programming, Hot reloading, faster run/build cycles have a direct impact on developer productivity and are commonly born from dynamic languages. A rich developer ecosystem is also an important factor in being able to quickly adopt well-written tested and hardened libraries which popular dynamic languages have aplenty which is a direct result of being able to attract a large pool of talented developers, languages that can do this are more popular than ones that don't, irrespective of their type systems.