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Types can help eliminate errors and unwanted behavior, yes. Just like tests. Types also help document code. Just like tests. The point is that both are invest

Types can help eliminate errors and unwanted behavior, yes. Just like tests. Types also help document code. Just like tests. The point is that both are investments and both have different payoff matrices. Sophisticated are often better at preventing obscure logical bugs. They're also good at uncovering obscure not-bugs and preventing code from getting out until the compiler is satisfied. Bad unit tests also do this. Haskell simply takes longer to write than other languages. Given two developers of equal skill and experience, anyway. I partly attribute the relative paucity of haskell software out there to this.

weberc2 7y ago
To be clear, there are many other statically types languages besides Haskell, most of which are more amenable to a faster pace of development. Further, while I agree with your “different matrixes of payout”, I think static types are a very low investment and they have a respectable payout in terms of preventing bugs but also in terms of documenting code and facilitating tooling (such as autocomplete or documentation generation) and they also permit easier code changes than comprehensive unit testing (even “good” unit testing). Of course, I’m not advocating that static types completely obviate tests; rather that they obviate some of the tests; however, there is no clear answer as to how many or which tests are obviated; it’s very circumstantial.