4 ms·
The debate over type conversion seems somewhat like arguing language features (such as weak typing vs strong), which has been a spirited debate since forever.
by gunapologist99 4y ago
The debate over type conversion seems somewhat like arguing language features (such as weak typing vs strong), which has been a spirited debate since forever.
The fact that this is debatable at all means that there are arguments and counter-arguments that serve both sides well, which further implies that there are use cases where some pros outweigh the cons on each side.
(Of course, this entirely neglects the point that it's usually fun and even educational to have a technical argument.)
- mjw1007 4y agoI don't have any great objection to a database that lets you store a value of any type in any column. And if they want to say '3' + 5 = 8, I could imagine why that might be fine. But I don't think that's a good reason to have behaviour like the above. I think it's more likely that they wouldn't choose to do those things again today: I think this is what fell out of the initial TCL-based implementation and they feel they're stuck with keeping it backwards-compatible.