3 ms·

> Unless the popularity of Rails, Python, PHP, and Javascript was all just collective insanity, dynamic languages do offer benefits in some circumstances over l

> Unless the popularity of Rails, Python, PHP, and Javascript was all just collective insanity, dynamic languages do offer benefits in some circumstances over languages with stronger type guarantees. with strongly typed languages it's harder to perform exploratory coding. This drives a kind of backpressure on the design stage of development where it becomes more prudent to design your classes and interfaces before you start coding, because changing interfaces part way through development is a much larger undertaking than in, say, Javascript. On the other hand, strongly typed languages provide a lot of guarantees that have to be coded for in dynamic languages. This is why I prefer gradual typing - you get the best of both worlds.

shcallaway 8y ago
I love the idea that typed languages create backpressure. I have very little confidence in peoples' ability to create well-designed (in software architecture terms) projects.
willtim 8y ago
This is not true in general. There is nothing intrinsic to static types that is incompatible with exploratory coding. If you want to turn all your type errors into runtime crashes, then some statically typed languages will even let you do this (e.g. deferred type errors in Haskell).
twic 8y ago
> with strongly typed languages [...] it becomes more prudent to design your classes and interfaces before you start coding, because changing interfaces part way through development is a much larger undertaking Quite the opposite. With strongly typed languages, it becomes safer to make changes, because the compiler will catch mistakes. On top of that, with mature strongly typed languages, there is tooling which takes advantage of the types to help you avoid mistakes in the first place.
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  It's safer to make changes, but you can't rapidly mess around with different structures without having to perform housekeeping on your types. This primarily applies to OO code, which is primarily where I draw my experience from - I find FP code is easier to refactor even with strong types because it doesn't enforce as rigid a structure.

shcallaway 8y ago

I love the idea that typed languages create backpressure. I have very little confidence in peoples' ability to create well-designed (in software architecture terms) projects.

willtim 8y ago

This is not true in general. There is nothing intrinsic to static types that is incompatible with exploratory coding. If you want to turn all your type errors into runtime crashes, then some statically typed languages will even let you do this (e.g. deferred type errors in Haskell).

twic 8y ago

> with strongly typed languages [...] it becomes more prudent to design your classes and interfaces before you start coding, because changing interfaces part way through development is a much larger undertaking Quite the opposite. With strongly typed languages, it becomes safer to make changes, because the compiler will catch mistakes. On top of that, with mature strongly typed languages, there is tooling which takes advantage of the types to help you avoid mistakes in the first place.

beaconstudios 8y ago
It's safer to make changes, but you can't rapidly mess around with different structures without having to perform housekeeping on your types. This primarily applies to OO code, which is primarily where I draw my experience from - I find FP code is easier to refactor even with strong types because it doesn't enforce as rigid a structure.