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> Our core belief is programmers spend too much time on repetitive work like copying and pasting from StackOverflow, fixing simple errors, and writing boilerpla

> Our core belief is programmers spend too much time on repetitive work like copying and pasting from StackOverflow, fixing simple errors, and writing boilerplate code. Do you have data backing this core belief up or is it just an intuition? I don't feel any of these things are problems I need a solution for. Maybe this depends on the type of programming someone does or the language they use but as a working programmer this is not a compelling sales pitch to me. You're offering solutions to problems I don't have. They're also not problems that I see to any great extent in junior programmers who report to me.

adamsmith 8y ago
On an intuitive level, I would guess there are many, many developers debugging a "you forgot to cast your int to a string" error message as I'm writing this. More concretely, the StackOverflow thread for "Parsing values from a JSON file?" has almost 3 million views. We take this as evidence that programming is repetitive. (We should probably clarify that when we say 'repetitive' we mean on a global scale, not an individual scale.)
- mattnewport 8y ago
  > I would guess there are many, many developers debugging a "you forgot to cast your int to a string" error message as I'm writing this. I've always avoided dynamically typed languages because of these types of issues so I guess this seems like a solved problem to me - just use a statically typed language. Clearly there are many people who are using dynamically typed languages for whatever reason though so I can see how better tooling might be useful to them. > More concretely, the StackOverflow thread for "Parsing values from a JSON file?" has almost 3 million views. I certainly make use of Stack Overflow, I was taking issue with the idea that significant time is spent copying and pasting code from the site though. I often refer to it to answer a programming related question but I almost never then copy and paste code. I'm looking for a pointer to a library or API, to understand some confusing or poorly documented behavior or for a workaround to a bug etc. and getting an answer to my question rarely leads to copying and pasting code in my experience.
  - Drdrdrq 8y ago
    I am using dynamic languages and have for years, but I don't see this as something that would help me in my work. I mean, autocomplete is nice sometimes, but when I know what to write and where, those little autocomplete boxes just get in the way. Maybe I'm also not the target audience though. Which is good - after reading how they started I would never willingly install their software.
  - bendavis381 8y ago
    There's a trend amongst dynamic languages to slowly add type hints (see Mypy for Python, Typescript, etc) so I see these issues becoming less important over time. I've been using Python on a daily basis for close to a decade now, I can probably count on my hand how many times a bug has been because of casting a string to an int.

adamsmith 8y ago

On an intuitive level, I would guess there are many, many developers debugging a "you forgot to cast your int to a string" error message as I'm writing this. More concretely, the StackOverflow thread for "Parsing values from a JSON file?" has almost 3 million views. We take this as evidence that programming is repetitive. (We should probably clarify that when we say 'repetitive' we mean on a global scale, not an individual scale.)

mattnewport 8y ago
> I would guess there are many, many developers debugging a "you forgot to cast your int to a string" error message as I'm writing this. I've always avoided dynamically typed languages because of these types of issues so I guess this seems like a solved problem to me - just use a statically typed language. Clearly there are many people who are using dynamically typed languages for whatever reason though so I can see how better tooling might be useful to them. > More concretely, the StackOverflow thread for "Parsing values from a JSON file?" has almost 3 million views. I certainly make use of Stack Overflow, I was taking issue with the idea that significant time is spent copying and pasting code from the site though. I often refer to it to answer a programming related question but I almost never then copy and paste code. I'm looking for a pointer to a library or API, to understand some confusing or poorly documented behavior or for a workaround to a bug etc. and getting an answer to my question rarely leads to copying and pasting code in my experience.
- Drdrdrq 8y ago
  I am using dynamic languages and have for years, but I don't see this as something that would help me in my work. I mean, autocomplete is nice sometimes, but when I know what to write and where, those little autocomplete boxes just get in the way. Maybe I'm also not the target audience though. Which is good - after reading how they started I would never willingly install their software.
- bendavis381 8y ago
  There's a trend amongst dynamic languages to slowly add type hints (see Mypy for Python, Typescript, etc) so I see these issues becoming less important over time. I've been using Python on a daily basis for close to a decade now, I can probably count on my hand how many times a bug has been because of casting a string to an int.