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Can someone please _prove_ that types make development somehow safer and more productive? I for example believe that readability matters, and typescript is not

Can someone please _prove_ that types make development somehow safer and more productive? I for example believe that readability matters, and typescript is not that, compared to Python or even coffeescript. And I really don't like how all the cool new languages lack significant whitespace. You can probably tell I'm a Pythonista. A Pythonista always pays his technical debt.

bayesian_horse 9y ago
Apparently nobody can prove type systems are more productive, or point at studies showing a benefit... And still, everybody agrees, according to the down votes. That is frustrating!
fpgaminer 9y ago
> And I really don't like how all the cool new languages lack significant whitespace. Significant whitespace is redundant in the face of auto formatters. The latter are becoming more popular, and rightfully so.
- bayesian_horse 9y ago
  Auto formatters still make you look at the braces... and typescript needs a lot of those. It's not just about formatting...
christophilus 9y ago
I think this [1] is one of the better references I've seen on this question. It's an analysis of bug-counts across Github projects. There's a correlation between number of lines of code and bugs. And there's a correlation between languages that favor simplicity and bugs. But there's not a a correlation between static typing and bugs. So, I think we can say that you don't choose static typing in order to write fewer bugs. I've worked in lots of code-bases, both static and non. Indeed, the bug rates are fairly consistent across them. The worst code bases I've seen (from a maintainability perspective) were actually old C++ and Visual Basic ones. Refactoring is easier in statically typed code-bases. But, in my experience, it's not significantly better. What makes a bigger difference is immutability, functional purity (within reason) and a preference for obviousness (as opposed to, say Ruby-like magic which makes me pull my hair out on a semi-daily basis). [1] https://dev.to/danlebrero/the-broken-promise-of-static-typing https://dev.to/danlebrero/the-broken-promise-of-static-typin...

bayesian_horse 9y ago

Apparently nobody can prove type systems are more productive, or point at studies showing a benefit... And still, everybody agrees, according to the down votes. That is frustrating!

fpgaminer 9y ago

> And I really don't like how all the cool new languages lack significant whitespace. Significant whitespace is redundant in the face of auto formatters. The latter are becoming more popular, and rightfully so.

bayesian_horse 9y ago
Auto formatters still make you look at the braces... and typescript needs a lot of those. It's not just about formatting...

christophilus 9y ago

I think this [1] is one of the better references I've seen on this question. It's an analysis of bug-counts across Github projects. There's a correlation between number of lines of code and bugs. And there's a correlation between languages that favor simplicity and bugs. But there's not a a correlation between static typing and bugs. So, I think we can say that you don't choose static typing in order to write fewer bugs. I've worked in lots of code-bases, both static and non. Indeed, the bug rates are fairly consistent across them. The worst code bases I've seen (from a maintainability perspective) were actually old C++ and Visual Basic ones. Refactoring is easier in statically typed code-bases. But, in my experience, it's not significantly better. What makes a bigger difference is immutability, functional purity (within reason) and a preference for obviousness (as opposed to, say Ruby-like magic which makes me pull my hair out on a semi-daily basis). [1] https://dev.to/danlebrero/the-broken-promise-of-static-typing https://dev.to/danlebrero/the-broken-promise-of-static-typin...