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Not to sound like a bitter C# programmer (formerly Java) not "getting" the whole fascination with weak typing and scripting languages, but I thought this piece

by trezor 18y ago

Not to sound like a bitter C# programmer (formerly Java) not "getting" the whole fascination with weak typing and scripting languages, but I thought this piece was pretty much junk. It very much felt like the underdog defending his position by attacking his perceived opponent. It's full of assertions of superiority and little to back it up. It may simply be a matter of taste, but I prefer a strictly typed environment. Code which can be compiled, and errors which can be caught before a single line is executed. I like making classes which abstracts the underlying work, hence improving (local) code readability. Granted, quite a few of the popular scripting languages does support OOP these days, but the usage among the hackers out there seem to vary greatly. Ofcourse, the degree of abstraction needed will vary from problem to problem. If you can fit your solution into one page of code (like he mentions), the problem probably isn't that big to begin with. If you are working on a more complex project, spanning thousands of lines of code, the benefits touted here seems less credible. Also, for a guy advocating that the main benefit of so called scripting languages are that they allow short, concise and straight to the point code: He might try to transfer that to his writing. That piece was anything but short, concise or straight to the point.

davidw 18y ago
> Ofcourse, the degree of abstraction needed will vary from problem to problem. If you can fit your solution into one page of code (like he mentions), the problem probably isn't that big to begin with. If you are working on a more complex project, spanning thousands of lines of code, the benefits touted here seems less credible. For one value of 'better', the better a language is, the wider range of possibilities it will afford you, handling both the quick task and the Big Complex Program well.
anamax 18y ago
> I like making classes which abstracts the underlying work, hence improving (local) code readability. Where did you get the impression that scripting folks don't do that? > Code which can be compiled, and errors which can be caught before a single line is executed. I find that most of the errors caught by compilers is in code that I had to insert to make the compiler happy while I worked on the actual problem. Yes, it's "just a little effort" to write stubs, but much of that work is wasted and it has to be done at the wrong time. It is much better to simply allow missing methods, etc. and trap on use.

by trezor 18y ago

davidw 18y ago

> Ofcourse, the degree of abstraction needed will vary from problem to problem. If you can fit your solution into one page of code (like he mentions), the problem probably isn't that big to begin with. If you are working on a more complex project, spanning thousands of lines of code, the benefits touted here seems less credible. For one value of 'better', the better a language is, the wider range of possibilities it will afford you, handling both the quick task and the Big Complex Program well.

anamax 18y ago

> I like making classes which abstracts the underlying work, hence improving (local) code readability. Where did you get the impression that scripting folks don't do that? > Code which can be compiled, and errors which can be caught before a single line is executed. I find that most of the errors caught by compilers is in code that I had to insert to make the compiler happy while I worked on the actual problem. Yes, it's "just a little effort" to write stubs, but much of that work is wasted and it has to be done at the wrong time. It is much better to simply allow missing methods, etc. and trap on use.