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> The world has generally considered weak typing a very bad idea. Now that is the type of thing that screams for supporting evidence. > Type coercion has too
by kbenson 8y ago
> The world has generally considered weak typing a very bad idea.
Now that is the type of thing that screams for supporting evidence.
> Type coercion has too many edge cases and unintuitive/unexpected combinations.
That depends on the implementation. I would say Perl handles this problem neatly by making the coercion done entirely based on the operator used, so it's always obvious.
- sdegutis 8y ago> Now that is the type of thing that screams for supporting evidence. I think the direction of mainstream programming languages over the past 20 years is overwhelmingly clear about this. There's only one language that I know of that's still in popular use and that likes weak typing. > That depends on the implementation. I would say Perl handles Yep that's the one.
- kbenson 8y ago> There's only one language that I know of that's still in popular use and that likes weak typing. As much as I wish it wasn't so, I believe PHP sees more activity currently than Perl, and it's also weakly typed. Javascript itself is weakly typed as well, which is why we're all having this discussion. I would say that two of the most popular languages (probably the two most popular new languages) of the last two decades have been weakly typed.
- sdegutis 8y agoThat's a fair point, but I think this article shows that weak typing in JS is actively avoided by most people. That's why the article is interesting in the first place. I don't know if PHP heavily relies on weak typing though, I haven't used it in 9-10 years. But JS doesn't rely on it. It's just there, and easily avoided.