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It’s not that they’re fashionable, it’s that their ergonomics have improved significantly over the past decade. I saw dynamic types as a response to cumbersome

It’s not that they’re fashionable, it’s that their ergonomics have improved significantly over the past decade. I saw dynamic types as a response to cumbersome static type systems, but increasingly type systems are becoming more expressive and less cumbersome.

eldavido 5y ago
Yeah, this is how I see it, too. Sort of a gradual convergence. On the static side, Java and especially C# are simply _better_ than they used to be. Type inference is great - I can just write var x = new List<Thing>() rather than having to stupidly repeat the type e.g. List<Thing> x = new List<Thing>(). Add in generics, and lambdas, and about a dozen other things that have now become widespread, and it's really a different game than 10 years ago. Coming the other way, I never expected to see Intellisense-like autocompletion for languages like Ruby or Python. It honestly feels magical. Refactoring has gotten much better to where I can pull methods up and down inheritance chains using PyCharm or other mainstream IDEs. I actually think it's mobile that's pushed people back toward static. Swift, ObjC, Java, and Kotlin are all static and there's less emphasis on this "one language" idea that drove a lot of people toward trying to use the same language (JS/TS) for their React front-ends and node backends.
- bcrosby95 5y ago
  But C# has had everything you've listed for over 10 years. Along with a great IDE that has provided very useful intellisense since pretty much the beginning.
  - eropple 5y ago
    You couldn't (easily) use C# to write the frontend for a web application that you wanted to use as either a developer or a user, though (which is to say sit down, ASP.NET Web Pages, nobody ever liked you). That's the lock that TypeScript turns, IMO.
    - bcrosby95 5y ago
      There aren't that many languages that do this even today, much less 10 years ago. You've basically turned what was a discussion about static typing in general into Javascript vs Typescript.
- DeathArrow 5y ago
  Not only C# and Java, but C++ has auto, Typescript has let, Rust has let and I think many other languages have type inference.

eldavido 5y ago

Yeah, this is how I see it, too. Sort of a gradual convergence. On the static side, Java and especially C# are simply _better_ than they used to be. Type inference is great - I can just write var x = new List<Thing>() rather than having to stupidly repeat the type e.g. List<Thing> x = new List<Thing>(). Add in generics, and lambdas, and about a dozen other things that have now become widespread, and it's really a different game than 10 years ago. Coming the other way, I never expected to see Intellisense-like autocompletion for languages like Ruby or Python. It honestly feels magical. Refactoring has gotten much better to where I can pull methods up and down inheritance chains using PyCharm or other mainstream IDEs. I actually think it's mobile that's pushed people back toward static. Swift, ObjC, Java, and Kotlin are all static and there's less emphasis on this "one language" idea that drove a lot of people toward trying to use the same language (JS/TS) for their React front-ends and node backends.

bcrosby95 5y ago
But C# has had everything you've listed for over 10 years. Along with a great IDE that has provided very useful intellisense since pretty much the beginning.
- eropple 5y ago
  You couldn't (easily) use C# to write the frontend for a web application that you wanted to use as either a developer or a user, though (which is to say sit down, ASP.NET Web Pages, nobody ever liked you). That's the lock that TypeScript turns, IMO.
  - bcrosby95 5y ago
    There aren't that many languages that do this even today, much less 10 years ago. You've basically turned what was a discussion about static typing in general into Javascript vs Typescript.
DeathArrow 5y ago
Not only C# and Java, but C++ has auto, Typescript has let, Rust has let and I think many other languages have type inference.