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Written on chalk board: I will not participate in Hacker News Static vs Dynamic typing debates. I will not participate in Hacker News Static vs Dynamic typing

by taude 8y ago

Written on chalk board: I will not participate in Hacker News Static vs Dynamic typing debates. I will not participate in Hacker News Static vs Dynamic typing debates. I will not participate in Hacker News Static vs Dynamic typing debates. I will not participate in Hacker News Static vs Dynamic typing debates. I will not participate in Hacker News Static vs Dynamic typing debates. Stay strong, Me

em-bee 8y ago
i started to add my thoughts elsewhere in the thread, wasn't quite sure how to word it and then thought of your comment, deciding you are right and dropping the matter...
taude 8y ago
On a serious note, the arguments made in the opening paragraph seem like pretty broad reaches on why corporate america does or doesn't use static typing. I'm pretty sure regulatory has nothing to do with it. I work in an environment of high compliance, though we use a lot of Java, we also use Python, Ruby, .NET, NodeJS, etc...
- tomstoms 8y ago
  Alas, developers, not corporate america, decide which languages are used. If stakeholders had any idea it mattered, the landscape may have looked very different.
rhacker 8y ago
This is actually pretty key - we're all familiar with the debate. It's like walking into a church and saying god doesn't exist. Or if you prefer, walking into an athiest's home and saying he does. ;) Besides, this thread still has only 65 comments and it will likely have thousands before the day is out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19190349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19190349
rapidrru 8y ago
This is one of the technical topics I've organized into a group I call "Topics that have launched a thousand flame wars." That being said, every now and then I find them a good refresher in software politics, with a side of insight.
- taude 8y ago
  I do think it's a good topic for engineers to discuss, though, because you can tell a lot about various peoples backgrounds, etc. on how dogmatic they are one way or the other, or even if they have more pragmatic attitudes on the topic.
rkangel 8y ago
The problem with the debate is that it's all based on personal preference and anecdotes, all of which are subject to cognitive biases. What we really need is a proper study, but they are notoriously hard. The debate fundamentally comes down to 'under what circumstances is the extra cost of working with a static type system worth it for the benefits'. For a 15 line helper script of the sort I've just written, Python with its dynamic typing is (to me - a proponent of static typing) the fastest thing to work with due to the low overhead. To me there is a threshold of project complexity where the cost-benefit ratio flips. Is that actually true? Does that vary for all people?
- IronBacon 8y ago
  > What we really need is a proper study, but they are notoriously hard. Here you go: "A large-scale study of programming languages and code quality in GitHub"[0]. I've only read the abstract (are we OK on sharing sci-hub links? [1]), spoiler alert, according to this research some languages are more defect prone than others but the effect is small. [0] https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2017/10/221326-a-large-scale-study-of-programming-languages-and-code-quality-in-github/abstract https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2017/10/221326-a-large-scale-... [1] sci-hub.se/10.1145/3126905
  - rkangel 8y ago
    I'm aware of this study, and a couple of others. They are all only looking at one area of productivity though, because that's the available data. In this particular case, there's no indication of development time required to achieve that level of bugginess. Maybe in practice all projects do enough work to reach an average level of reliability, but then what's interesting is how much developer time is required to get there. It's a total cost analysis that's interesting - and there's a lot of costs. Cost of development, how that varies depending on required time to market, cost of bugs (fixing them, and loss of sales due to customer reliability concerns), cost of complexity as software has to be maintained over time.
    - IronBacon 8y ago
AnimalMuppet 8y ago
I suspect (but cannot prove) that some peoples' brains are wired such that static types fit them better, and other peoples' brains are wired such that dynamic types fit them better. I suspect the same about procedural vs. functional programming. And I suspect that's why discussions about them wind up the way they do. It's just obvious which one is better - to you. It's so obvious that it doesn't even seem to need proof. And therefore it seems that everyone who sees it differently must be ignorant, an idiot, or a troll. Or so I suspect.

by taude 8y ago

em-bee 8y ago

i started to add my thoughts elsewhere in the thread, wasn't quite sure how to word it and then thought of your comment, deciding you are right and dropping the matter...

taude 8y ago

On a serious note, the arguments made in the opening paragraph seem like pretty broad reaches on why corporate america does or doesn't use static typing. I'm pretty sure regulatory has nothing to do with it. I work in an environment of high compliance, though we use a lot of Java, we also use Python, Ruby, .NET, NodeJS, etc...

tomstoms 8y ago
Alas, developers, not corporate america, decide which languages are used. If stakeholders had any idea it mattered, the landscape may have looked very different.

rhacker 8y ago

This is actually pretty key - we're all familiar with the debate. It's like walking into a church and saying god doesn't exist. Or if you prefer, walking into an athiest's home and saying he does. ;) Besides, this thread still has only 65 comments and it will likely have thousands before the day is out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19190349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19190349

rapidrru 8y ago

This is one of the technical topics I've organized into a group I call "Topics that have launched a thousand flame wars." That being said, every now and then I find them a good refresher in software politics, with a side of insight.

taude 8y ago
I do think it's a good topic for engineers to discuss, though, because you can tell a lot about various peoples backgrounds, etc. on how dogmatic they are one way or the other, or even if they have more pragmatic attitudes on the topic.

rkangel 8y ago

The problem with the debate is that it's all based on personal preference and anecdotes, all of which are subject to cognitive biases. What we really need is a proper study, but they are notoriously hard. The debate fundamentally comes down to 'under what circumstances is the extra cost of working with a static type system worth it for the benefits'. For a 15 line helper script of the sort I've just written, Python with its dynamic typing is (to me - a proponent of static typing) the fastest thing to work with due to the low overhead. To me there is a threshold of project complexity where the cost-benefit ratio flips. Is that actually true? Does that vary for all people?

IronBacon 8y ago
> What we really need is a proper study, but they are notoriously hard. Here you go: "A large-scale study of programming languages and code quality in GitHub"[0]. I've only read the abstract (are we OK on sharing sci-hub links? [1]), spoiler alert, according to this research some languages are more defect prone than others but the effect is small. [0] https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2017/10/221326-a-large-scale-study-of-programming-languages-and-code-quality-in-github/abstract https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2017/10/221326-a-large-scale-... [1] sci-hub.se/10.1145/3126905
- rkangel 8y ago
  I'm aware of this study, and a couple of others. They are all only looking at one area of productivity though, because that's the available data. In this particular case, there's no indication of development time required to achieve that level of bugginess. Maybe in practice all projects do enough work to reach an average level of reliability, but then what's interesting is how much developer time is required to get there. It's a total cost analysis that's interesting - and there's a lot of costs. Cost of development, how that varies depending on required time to market, cost of bugs (fixing them, and loss of sales due to customer reliability concerns), cost of complexity as software has to be maintained over time.
  - IronBacon 8y ago

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

I suspect (but cannot prove) that some peoples' brains are wired such that static types fit them better, and other peoples' brains are wired such that dynamic types fit them better. I suspect the same about procedural vs. functional programming. And I suspect that's why discussions about them wind up the way they do. It's just obvious which one is better - to you. It's so obvious that it doesn't even seem to need proof. And therefore it seems that everyone who sees it differently must be ignorant, an idiot, or a troll. Or so I suspect.