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> Contra: (some) people doing exploratory programming in the small e.g. scientists don't want to have to deal with the type checker. Which in at least some cas

by ardy42 6y ago

> Contra: (some) people doing exploratory programming in the small e.g. scientists don't want to have to deal with the type checker. Which in at least some cases means ignoring bugs. Pretty much every system I've worked on that used a language that didn't to type checking (or was too forgiving about it) has had runtime bugs because of type incompatibility or type coercion issues.

rscho 6y ago
> Which in at least some cases means ignoring bugs Indeed, but simplicity is the name of the game for exploratory programming. It's difficult to explore using languages requiring a lot of ceremony. But then, that's when the time and funding constraints come in and prevent rewriting in more type sound languages. Which is why we end up with buggy python (if speed not an issue) or buggy C (if speed is an issue). There are alternate paths. For example, APL tries to be terse enough that you can have the whole thing on a single screen. That's another attempt at bug prevention. For example, I do my data wrangling in J.
- jjnoakes 6y ago
  > languages requiring a lot of ceremony Some statically-typed languages don't require a lot of ceremony.
jshen 6y ago
Is it a bug if it never happens? Another way to say it, would you pay money to prevent a problem you don’t have?
- cheriot 6y ago
  Is having buggy, unused code lying around a good thing?
  - jshen 6y ago
    It’s not always bad, and dealing with it has a cost. The cost is not always worth. It may be worth it most of the time, but not always.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Is it a bug if it never happens? Another way to say it, would you pay money to prevent a problem you don’t have? Let me rephrase that: Is it a bug if I don't know about it? Another way to say it, would you pay money to prevent a problem you're not (yet) aware of? Saying the bugs "never happen" is basically saying "I always write bug-free code." I feel languages that don't have type checking (or where it's sloppy), force developers perform semi-automated testing (i.e. unit tests to catch type issues) when they could have systematic, fully-automated testing (for type issues, at least)
  - jshen 6y ago
    Right, but some people are doing data wrangling by themselves with python in a jupyter notebook. These aren’t production systems, and static type checking slows you down without adding much value. That’s all I’m saying, the data analyst that has some edge case “bug” that never gets executed probably shouldn’t pay the upfront overhead cost of type checking.

by ardy42 6y ago

rscho 6y ago

> Which in at least some cases means ignoring bugs Indeed, but simplicity is the name of the game for exploratory programming. It's difficult to explore using languages requiring a lot of ceremony. But then, that's when the time and funding constraints come in and prevent rewriting in more type sound languages. Which is why we end up with buggy python (if speed not an issue) or buggy C (if speed is an issue). There are alternate paths. For example, APL tries to be terse enough that you can have the whole thing on a single screen. That's another attempt at bug prevention. For example, I do my data wrangling in J.

jjnoakes 6y ago
> languages requiring a lot of ceremony Some statically-typed languages don't require a lot of ceremony.

jshen 6y ago

Is it a bug if it never happens? Another way to say it, would you pay money to prevent a problem you don’t have?

cheriot 6y ago
Is having buggy, unused code lying around a good thing?
- jshen 6y ago
  It’s not always bad, and dealing with it has a cost. The cost is not always worth. It may be worth it most of the time, but not always.
ardy42 6y ago
> Is it a bug if it never happens? Another way to say it, would you pay money to prevent a problem you don’t have? Let me rephrase that: Is it a bug if I don't know about it? Another way to say it, would you pay money to prevent a problem you're not (yet) aware of? Saying the bugs "never happen" is basically saying "I always write bug-free code." I feel languages that don't have type checking (or where it's sloppy), force developers perform semi-automated testing (i.e. unit tests to catch type issues) when they could have systematic, fully-automated testing (for type issues, at least)
- jshen 6y ago
  Right, but some people are doing data wrangling by themselves with python in a jupyter notebook. These aren’t production systems, and static type checking slows you down without adding much value. That’s all I’m saying, the data analyst that has some edge case “bug” that never gets executed probably shouldn’t pay the upfront overhead cost of type checking.