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On a quick search, for example https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-013-9289-1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-013-9289-1. "This pa

On a quick search, for example https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-013-9289-1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-013-9289-1. "This paper describes an experiment that tests whether static type systems improve the maintainability of software systems, in terms of understanding undocumented code, fixing type errors, and fixing semantic errors. The results show rigorous empirical evidence that static types are indeed beneficial to these activities, except when fixing semantic errors." is pretty much as strongly worded as scientific journals can accept.

CraigJPerry 4y ago
Cool - this paper has 3 conclusions: - Static type systems are an effective form of documentation – Static type systems reduce the effort to fix type errors – Static type systems may not be helpful in preventing semantic errors It would have been awesome to have evidence for #3 but even just #1 & #2 could be useful, albeit to a much lesser extent. Could we quantify by how much? It’d be important to quantify because if static types mean a developer can be done sooner, then they have spare time to spend improving the software. So do these differences with static types translate into benefits for the developer? The author of that paper says no. He published this other paper just after that one: https://www.ics.uci.edu/~jajones/INF102-S18/readings/23_hanenberg.pdf https://www.ics.uci.edu/~jajones/INF102-S18/readings/23_hane...
- oriolid 4y ago
  For the second paper, looks like the test task is quite small and the language used requires more work from developer than a modern static type system with type inference and generics. Still the difference between static and dynamic typed variants is rather small. I wonder if the situation would change if the project took weeks or months instead of hours, but that would be an expensive experiment. Also, it would be interesting to see if type inference and generics would increase productivity but in the real world we are stuck with Java and Go anyway. Other take home message is that the famous 10x programmer was found in both groups. The one with dynamic language was faster, just as the argument for dynamic typing goes.

CraigJPerry 4y ago

Cool - this paper has 3 conclusions: - Static type systems are an effective form of documentation – Static type systems reduce the effort to fix type errors – Static type systems may not be helpful in preventing semantic errors It would have been awesome to have evidence for #3 but even just #1 & #2 could be useful, albeit to a much lesser extent. Could we quantify by how much? It’d be important to quantify because if static types mean a developer can be done sooner, then they have spare time to spend improving the software. So do these differences with static types translate into benefits for the developer? The author of that paper says no. He published this other paper just after that one: https://www.ics.uci.edu/~jajones/INF102-S18/readings/23_hanenberg.pdf https://www.ics.uci.edu/~jajones/INF102-S18/readings/23_hane...

oriolid 4y ago
For the second paper, looks like the test task is quite small and the language used requires more work from developer than a modern static type system with type inference and generics. Still the difference between static and dynamic typed variants is rather small. I wonder if the situation would change if the project took weeks or months instead of hours, but that would be an expensive experiment. Also, it would be interesting to see if type inference and generics would increase productivity but in the real world we are stuck with Java and Go anyway. Other take home message is that the famous 10x programmer was found in both groups. The one with dynamic language was faster, just as the argument for dynamic typing goes.