3 ms·
After many years of python I welcome the change. Neatness is in the eye of the beholder. Type safety is a quantitative metric of improvement. A program with ty
by deltaonefour 5y ago
After many years of python I welcome the change.
Neatness is in the eye of the beholder. Type safety is a quantitative metric of improvement. A program with type checking is more safe then one without.
A quantitative improvement cannot be argued against. A qualitative one... Well, personally I find types to be neater than no types.
- gmfawcett 5y agoYes, though I'd say subjective vs. objective rather than qualitative vs. quantitative. Type safety is a quality, not a quantity (unless you're counting the expressions that type-check!).
- deltaonefour 5y agoType safety is a quantity measured in type errors. How many type errors in a language that is not type checked vs. how many errors in a program that is? The numerical difference is quantitative. You can therefore do data analysis on this. Though a type safe program should in theory have ZERO type errors during runtime.
- gmfawcett 5y agoWe can agree to disagree on that. :) By your metric, I can improve type safety simply by weakening the guarantees of my type system. Putting it another way -- a type safe program, in the limit, should have an infinite number of type errors. :)