4 ms·

> Honestly will never go back to languages without type checking, it prevents so many bugs and is a huge help in understanding code you haven’t worked with prev

> Honestly will never go back to languages without type checking, it prevents so many bugs and is a huge help in understanding code you haven’t worked with previously. I see static types as one of the most powerful communication tools around, as far as code goes. I can't relate at all to people complaining that they waste time. They must work very differently from how I do, is all I can figure. It's that, or they don't realize how much time they're losing to communication-related tasks, or refactoring, or writing (and maintaining!) extra or more verbose tests, or having even one more bug per year make it to production, or whatever, that'd be saved by static types, so aren't correctly accounting for the time savings. One of the two.

adrianmonk 5y ago
Consider these 4 possible combinations for programming languages: (1) Low-level, static types (2) Low-level, dynamic types (3) High-level, static types (4) High-level, dynamic types For whatever reason, historically #1 and #4 have been most popular. C, C++, Pascal, Ada, and Java are #1. Python, JavaScript, Perl, and BASIC are #4. There haven't been a lot of #2 or #3 languages. Some #3 languages (TypeScript and Python with types) have come along, but relatively recently. A person who experiences only #1 and #4 might notice that they can whip up programs faster in a #4 language than in a #1 language, then falsely attribute that difference to the static types. Whereas the real reason is working at a different level of abstraction.
- DylanSp 5y ago
  I don't really see how Java is closer to C than it is to Python in terms of what level of abstraction it's working on, could you elaborate?
  - nayuki 5y ago
    It's a matter of opinion whether Java's level is closer to C or Python. But I can name a bunch of high-level features in Python that aren't in Java: List literals, dictionary literals, tuples, bigint literals, byte strings, f-strings, sequence unpacking assignment, named parameters (kwargs), decorators, closures (functions within functions), metaclasses, generators, async, list/set/dict/generator comprehensions, multiple inheritance, natural JSON support, ...
    - Jensson 5y ago
      However Java do support dynamic typing for every object even if it is a bit cumbersome so putting it at the same level as C++ isn't accurate either.
    - jayd16 5y ago
      C# has most of this stuff and I think Java has at least a few of these but I wouldn't say any of these are really much of a differentiator.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    And at what level of abstraction does ISO C work on? "C Is Not a Low-level Language, Your computer is not a fast PDP-11." https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3212479 https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3212479
    - Jensson 5y ago
      That would be a good point if you actually could write the final code for CPU's, but you can't since the CPU internals do that for you. So from an application programmers perspective machine code is as low as it gets and C maps really well to machine code so C is a low level language.
      - SubjectToChange 5y ago
        > So from an application programmers perspective machine code is as low as it gets and C maps really well to machine code so C is a low level language. C only "maps really well" to PDP-11 style machine code. If you want SIMD, parallel algorithms, heterogeneous programming, memory hierarchies/domains, etc then ISO C is completely useless.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        Only if that machine is a 8 or 16 bit CPU, with code compiled as -O0. And even then, it's impossible to write something like malloc() without using either an external Assembler or language extensions.
- fuckf4ce 5y ago
  Lumping Java and C together is a stretch. Even Ada and C. I think Ada is a good example that your proposed classification scheme is invalid -- what is low vs high level? Maybe Java has historically been weak in the language features department but it has had non-optional automatic memory management from the get go. What about C#? It's not exactly unpopular.
- shpongled 5y ago
  #3 languages have been around since the 80's (SML) and 90's (Haskell)
- pansa2 5y ago
  Exactly. IMO we still don't have a good #3 language - in particular, all of the popular languages that can be compiled into native code are in category #1.
  - habitue 5y ago
    I'd say rust and swift are in the #3 category. Really, C++ is pretty damn high level, just not a sound type system. But it's static
  - Akronymus 5y ago
    I'd say that f# haskell ocaml and such labguages fall under #3.
alpaca128 5y ago
I can remember that in the beginning it felt cumbersome to me because I wasn't all too familiar with that language's type system and so I had all kinds of errors thrown at me. But it's something you just have to get used to, and now that I understand it much better I feel more productive and have more confidence in my code. And the communication aspect is definitely a great help too. No handwritten documentation can be this consistent, completely independent of who touched the code (though to be fair, it's still difficult to get the naming right). I can't imagine the people calling it a waste of time got over the hump in the beginning. To me it's obviously a timesaver. It does a tedious, difficult (for humans) task and does it quickly & with perfect accuracy. Beforehand worrying about all the type signatures and interfaces felt like 4D Sudoku across various modules, now I can concentrate on the interesting parts.

adrianmonk 5y ago

Consider these 4 possible combinations for programming languages: (1) Low-level, static types (2) Low-level, dynamic types (3) High-level, static types (4) High-level, dynamic types For whatever reason, historically #1 and #4 have been most popular. C, C++, Pascal, Ada, and Java are #1. Python, JavaScript, Perl, and BASIC are #4. There haven't been a lot of #2 or #3 languages. Some #3 languages (TypeScript and Python with types) have come along, but relatively recently. A person who experiences only #1 and #4 might notice that they can whip up programs faster in a #4 language than in a #1 language, then falsely attribute that difference to the static types. Whereas the real reason is working at a different level of abstraction.

DylanSp 5y ago
I don't really see how Java is closer to C than it is to Python in terms of what level of abstraction it's working on, could you elaborate?
- nayuki 5y ago
  It's a matter of opinion whether Java's level is closer to C or Python. But I can name a bunch of high-level features in Python that aren't in Java: List literals, dictionary literals, tuples, bigint literals, byte strings, f-strings, sequence unpacking assignment, named parameters (kwargs), decorators, closures (functions within functions), metaclasses, generators, async, list/set/dict/generator comprehensions, multiple inheritance, natural JSON support, ...
  - Jensson 5y ago
    However Java do support dynamic typing for every object even if it is a bit cumbersome so putting it at the same level as C++ isn't accurate either.
  - jayd16 5y ago
    C# has most of this stuff and I think Java has at least a few of these but I wouldn't say any of these are really much of a differentiator.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  And at what level of abstraction does ISO C work on? "C Is Not a Low-level Language, Your computer is not a fast PDP-11." https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3212479 https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3212479
  - Jensson 5y ago
    That would be a good point if you actually could write the final code for CPU's, but you can't since the CPU internals do that for you. So from an application programmers perspective machine code is as low as it gets and C maps really well to machine code so C is a low level language.
    - SubjectToChange 5y ago
      > So from an application programmers perspective machine code is as low as it gets and C maps really well to machine code so C is a low level language. C only "maps really well" to PDP-11 style machine code. If you want SIMD, parallel algorithms, heterogeneous programming, memory hierarchies/domains, etc then ISO C is completely useless.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Only if that machine is a 8 or 16 bit CPU, with code compiled as -O0. And even then, it's impossible to write something like malloc() without using either an external Assembler or language extensions.
fuckf4ce 5y ago
Lumping Java and C together is a stretch. Even Ada and C. I think Ada is a good example that your proposed classification scheme is invalid -- what is low vs high level? Maybe Java has historically been weak in the language features department but it has had non-optional automatic memory management from the get go. What about C#? It's not exactly unpopular.
shpongled 5y ago
#3 languages have been around since the 80's (SML) and 90's (Haskell)
pansa2 5y ago
Exactly. IMO we still don't have a good #3 language - in particular, all of the popular languages that can be compiled into native code are in category #1.
- habitue 5y ago
  I'd say rust and swift are in the #3 category. Really, C++ is pretty damn high level, just not a sound type system. But it's static
- Akronymus 5y ago
  I'd say that f# haskell ocaml and such labguages fall under #3.

alpaca128 5y ago

I can remember that in the beginning it felt cumbersome to me because I wasn't all too familiar with that language's type system and so I had all kinds of errors thrown at me. But it's something you just have to get used to, and now that I understand it much better I feel more productive and have more confidence in my code. And the communication aspect is definitely a great help too. No handwritten documentation can be this consistent, completely independent of who touched the code (though to be fair, it's still difficult to get the naming right). I can't imagine the people calling it a waste of time got over the hump in the beginning. To me it's obviously a timesaver. It does a tedious, difficult (for humans) task and does it quickly & with perfect accuracy. Beforehand worrying about all the type signatures and interfaces felt like 4D Sudoku across various modules, now I can concentrate on the interesting parts.