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It's far more useful to implement validation and type checking via introspection and interrogation of type, quantity, structure, size, or some other property at

It's far more useful to implement validation and type checking via introspection and interrogation of type, quantity, structure, size, or some other property at runtime in a dynamic programming language than to pedantically have to type all your variables. Most interesting types are far from the basics of different size numbers, string and objects anyway. It's better to trade a fast and quick runtime type error than a lengthy compile-time type checking process, because less code needs to be evaluated at run-time to expose the type error. See the "Worse is better" principle in language design. Wouldn't it be great if we can use the computer to figure out what the types should be by a runtime evaluation of the code and save precious human time for things only humans can do? I don't have to think or decorate my speech with types of noun, verb, pronoun, adjective etc. when I speak, but I'm still able to communicate very effectively, because your brain is automatically adding the correct type information based on context that helps you understand what I'm saying, even with words that have multiple types. Granted, natural language is different than programming language but there was once a trend to try and make programming languages more like human language, not less so.

yawaramin 9y ago
> It's far more useful to implement validation and type checking via ... runtime in a dynamic programming language than to pedantically have to type all your variables. How is that? I'm not seeing the increased utility. > It's better to trade a fast and quick runtime type error.... What if the runtime type error crashes your app in production and loses your company money? What if it's something that slipped through your end-to-end integration testing because certain unlikely conditions never got covered, but they happened in production? > ... than a lengthy compile-time type checking process,... There are several modern compilers which are quite fast: D, OCaml, Java. > ... because less code needs to be evaluated at run-time to expose the type error. With static type checking, no code needs to be evaluated at runtime to expose a type error. Does dynamic typechecking offer a reduction over that? > Wouldn't it be great if we can use the computer to figure out what the types should be by a runtime evaluation of the code and save precious human time for things only humans can do? Wouldn't it be great if the computer would figure out the types at compile time and save us from having to manually input them? Well, the computer can do that, thanks to type inference. Several popular languages offer full, powerful type inference.

yawaramin 9y ago

> It's far more useful to implement validation and type checking via ... runtime in a dynamic programming language than to pedantically have to type all your variables. How is that? I'm not seeing the increased utility. > It's better to trade a fast and quick runtime type error.... What if the runtime type error crashes your app in production and loses your company money? What if it's something that slipped through your end-to-end integration testing because certain unlikely conditions never got covered, but they happened in production? > ... than a lengthy compile-time type checking process,... There are several modern compilers which are quite fast: D, OCaml, Java. > ... because less code needs to be evaluated at run-time to expose the type error. With static type checking, no code needs to be evaluated at runtime to expose a type error. Does dynamic typechecking offer a reduction over that? > Wouldn't it be great if we can use the computer to figure out what the types should be by a runtime evaluation of the code and save precious human time for things only humans can do? Wouldn't it be great if the computer would figure out the types at compile time and save us from having to manually input them? Well, the computer can do that, thanks to type inference. Several popular languages offer full, powerful type inference.