3 ms·

> there isn’t much evidence in either direction Oh, I think there are great evidences, such as: dialyzer, or ruby3 and python3 shifting towards type signatures

> there isn’t much evidence in either direction Oh, I think there are great evidences, such as: dialyzer, or ruby3 and python3 shifting towards type signatures everywhere and gradual typing, or recent racket focus on typed racket. Oh, and the rise of typescript of course. I mean, I've abandoned Python years ago, and I was quite surprised when I discovered python people are adding type annotations everywhere. Sure, gradual typing is not a strictly enforced as in statically typed languages, but seems people are agree that modularity and abstraction without type signatures is painful in sufficiently large programs.

dan-robertson 6y ago
What you have described is an anecdote rather than any study that attempts to be impartial which is what I really meant when I wrote ‘evidence.’ I’m sorry for not being clear enough. I don’t feel like this anecdote is evidence because I don’t think it’s inconsistent with the trend towards more static types over the last 5-10 years or so. For this anecdote to be convincing I would need to think that programming language design happens because of carefully thought out and researched decisions and quick feedback as good languages are used and bad languages are dropped, but I don’t believe this.
- ernst_klim 6y ago
  This is not an anecdote by definition, since these languages represents quite a huge marketshare (and most of the rest langs are already statically typed). Yes, this is not a sound rigid empirical proof, it's an observation (i.e. unlike the case of anecdotal, you can measure the marketshare of user, how many do use dialyzer or typescript, etc etc). We can't simply ignore any observations that are not scientifically rigid, otherwise the whole edifice of philosophy or even some natural sciences should simply perish. I don't think you can just omit that. I'm a fan of Lakatos here, if I have some observation, I think one need at least as convincing evidence or more rigid one to prove otherwise. > because of carefully thought out and researched decisions I think it's a better evidence exactly because it's what language users are asking about, and what large chunk of language users choose to use when they got a choice. This shows that quite a big share if not majority of programmers value type annotations.
  - dan-robertson 6y ago
    > I think it's a better evidence exactly because it's what language users are asking about, and what large chunk of language users choose to use when they got a choice. This shows that quite a big share if not majority of programmers value type annotations. To be clear, this is where I disagree. I don’t want to claim that people don’t think hard about language design or that users aren’t asking for these features as I think both of those statements are true. But I strongly disagree that languages doing things (and those languages being popular) is good evidence that those things are good. I think a lot of language design is driven by fashion (ie keeping up with what similar languages are doing) and I claim that this is a more convincing reason for python having some gradual typing. I think large number of people is moving to/from from python for gradual typing in aggregate, and I don’t think it’s happening on the margin either. I think any wise decisions about languages are more likely to be driven by practical considerations (what do people know, what are they used to, what can people be hired for, what libraries are available, what platforms are supported, what performance is required, and so on). Just because python has a large market share, it doesn’t mean it’s users are supporters of gradual typing, it just means that they thought python was a good idea when they first started using it and they haven’t justified the cost of changing to something else. The users didn’t choose gradual typing they just chose “upgrade the language to the next version” Even if I agreed with your claim that many users asked for gradual typing, I don’t agree that in aggregate users ask for things that will be good for them or good in general. Maybe users are just trying to figure out a way to say “we want our programs to be less buggy” and think this might help. I think there are better examples in programming language design of what can happen if you keep giving users what they are asking for.

dan-robertson 6y ago

What you have described is an anecdote rather than any study that attempts to be impartial which is what I really meant when I wrote ‘evidence.’ I’m sorry for not being clear enough. I don’t feel like this anecdote is evidence because I don’t think it’s inconsistent with the trend towards more static types over the last 5-10 years or so. For this anecdote to be convincing I would need to think that programming language design happens because of carefully thought out and researched decisions and quick feedback as good languages are used and bad languages are dropped, but I don’t believe this.

ernst_klim 6y ago
This is not an anecdote by definition, since these languages represents quite a huge marketshare (and most of the rest langs are already statically typed). Yes, this is not a sound rigid empirical proof, it's an observation (i.e. unlike the case of anecdotal, you can measure the marketshare of user, how many do use dialyzer or typescript, etc etc). We can't simply ignore any observations that are not scientifically rigid, otherwise the whole edifice of philosophy or even some natural sciences should simply perish. I don't think you can just omit that. I'm a fan of Lakatos here, if I have some observation, I think one need at least as convincing evidence or more rigid one to prove otherwise. > because of carefully thought out and researched decisions I think it's a better evidence exactly because it's what language users are asking about, and what large chunk of language users choose to use when they got a choice. This shows that quite a big share if not majority of programmers value type annotations.
- dan-robertson 6y ago
  > I think it's a better evidence exactly because it's what language users are asking about, and what large chunk of language users choose to use when they got a choice. This shows that quite a big share if not majority of programmers value type annotations. To be clear, this is where I disagree. I don’t want to claim that people don’t think hard about language design or that users aren’t asking for these features as I think both of those statements are true. But I strongly disagree that languages doing things (and those languages being popular) is good evidence that those things are good. I think a lot of language design is driven by fashion (ie keeping up with what similar languages are doing) and I claim that this is a more convincing reason for python having some gradual typing. I think large number of people is moving to/from from python for gradual typing in aggregate, and I don’t think it’s happening on the margin either. I think any wise decisions about languages are more likely to be driven by practical considerations (what do people know, what are they used to, what can people be hired for, what libraries are available, what platforms are supported, what performance is required, and so on). Just because python has a large market share, it doesn’t mean it’s users are supporters of gradual typing, it just means that they thought python was a good idea when they first started using it and they haven’t justified the cost of changing to something else. The users didn’t choose gradual typing they just chose “upgrade the language to the next version” Even if I agreed with your claim that many users asked for gradual typing, I don’t agree that in aggregate users ask for things that will be good for them or good in general. Maybe users are just trying to figure out a way to say “we want our programs to be less buggy” and think this might help. I think there are better examples in programming language design of what can happen if you keep giving users what they are asking for.