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I’ve never once felt like strong typing has prevented me from solving unknown problems. I won’t deny that there have been occasions where I’ve had to redefine a
by laumars 5y ago
I’ve never once felt like strong typing has prevented me from solving unknown problems. I won’t deny that there have been occasions where I’ve had to redefine a type across a large code base and that has taken me half an hour to a hour. But I’d take that over type validation at run time.
For me, having strict typing helps with unknown problems because it gives me greater confidence that refactoring wouldn’t introduce subtle regression bugs.
- wpietri 5y agoThanks for the reply. For me the cost isn't just redefining a type. It's the continuous work of reifying types that could be implicit for a while and possibly forever, because concepts don't last long enough to need it. For me, having written a lot of code in Java and Scala but also in Ruby and Python, typing is a nice adjunct to unit tests and operational monitoring, but not my fundamental way of ensuring correctness. And correctness often isn't the highest value in practice, especially early on in a startup's life.