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Static checking burdens the developer with thinking more, etc. -- for sure. The cost is requiring a developer with stronger cognitive abstracting skills. Those

Static checking burdens the developer with thinking more, etc. -- for sure. The cost is requiring a developer with stronger cognitive abstracting skills. Those people tend to be academics (its almost a definition of a good academic) and also, perhaps, less pragmatic. The ease of programming is not merely a matter of knowledge or experience, base cognitive skills play a very significant part which are largely an at-birth and developmental factor (cf. The Neuroscience of Intelligence (Cambridge Fundamentals of Neuroscience in Psychology)). Probably languages requiring a proficiency at dealing with highly abstract relationships as part of the activity of programming are never going to be mainstream. Most people find that too difficult to do easily, and so too tasking to program. That isn't the general case however. Some people find it easy enough, and so do not see this tradeoff. For these people, the clear benefits in creating a statically "correct" program outweigh the minor difficulty in creating it. For the able, this "difficulty" is perceived as fun, and as frustrating by those who aren't. When something is beyond our basic capacity we tend to see it as "needlessly difficult" and not worthy of our time/attention (and of course, for us, it is). In otherwords: the unable are often snobs. eg. "Acting is stupid", "Rust is crap", "Painting is pointless" etc. -- all amount to, "i struggle to do that".

TomVDB 8y ago
> In otherwords: the unable are often snobs. Oh the irony.
- mjburgess 8y ago
  You'll find no value judgement in my comment. There are many axes of intelligence, as well as of human value in general. I only said that comfort-with-abstraction is one axis on which people vary -- and I'd say that's exactly what the previous comment relies upon. All it says is "this is needlessly hard", the only reply can really be: yes, for you. I was offering an explanation of why that is; or else are we really saying that this "hardness" is universal? One of the more important characteristics of a developer is pragmatism which has zero covariance with comfort-with-abstraction. And so, why not value those who have that more? That is, to be better at abstraction isnt to be a better developer. It is only to be better at one sort of development. Equally, to have more pragmatism is to be better at a different sort. There's no snobbishness in my comment, only in a person who reads into it a value judgement about this specific form of intelligence. Why read that into it?
kybernetikos 8y ago
> Static checking burdens the developer with thinking more, etc. -- for sure. I'm not sure I agree. Most type languages as implemented in common programming languages are bad at describing abstraction. This means that if you're programming in one of these languages, you are forced to reduce your level of abstraction (which is sometimes touted as an advantage). And just because someone's smart enough to find working out how to satisfy the type checker an enjoyable challenge, doesn't mean they're dumb enough to think that just because it's fun it is always a good use of their time.

TomVDB 8y ago

> In otherwords: the unable are often snobs. Oh the irony.

mjburgess 8y ago
You'll find no value judgement in my comment. There are many axes of intelligence, as well as of human value in general. I only said that comfort-with-abstraction is one axis on which people vary -- and I'd say that's exactly what the previous comment relies upon. All it says is "this is needlessly hard", the only reply can really be: yes, for you. I was offering an explanation of why that is; or else are we really saying that this "hardness" is universal? One of the more important characteristics of a developer is pragmatism which has zero covariance with comfort-with-abstraction. And so, why not value those who have that more? That is, to be better at abstraction isnt to be a better developer. It is only to be better at one sort of development. Equally, to have more pragmatism is to be better at a different sort. There's no snobbishness in my comment, only in a person who reads into it a value judgement about this specific form of intelligence. Why read that into it?

kybernetikos 8y ago

> Static checking burdens the developer with thinking more, etc. -- for sure. I'm not sure I agree. Most type languages as implemented in common programming languages are bad at describing abstraction. This means that if you're programming in one of these languages, you are forced to reduce your level of abstraction (which is sometimes touted as an advantage). And just because someone's smart enough to find working out how to satisfy the type checker an enjoyable challenge, doesn't mean they're dumb enough to think that just because it's fun it is always a good use of their time.