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Anders Hejlsberg explains in the link below that for decades much of computer science was concerned with strict typing as a tool to ensure program correctness.
by labrador 4y ago
Anders Hejlsberg explains in the link below that for decades much of computer science was concerned with strict typing as a tool to ensure program correctness. As the consequences of incorrect code have declined - you're unlikely to crash the browser much less the machine with bad JavaScript - the opportunities to explore flexible and more expressive typing have increased. I know younger programmers who don't even bother to check for errors. This is shocking to me as an older programmer. I wonder if this is a factor for the decline in software quality Jonathan Blow talks about in his video. If so, we need to find a way to encourage programmers not to be lazy about errors. The Blue Screen of Death used to be all the encouragement I needed.
Typescript - Type System explained from Anders Hejlsberg - creator of Typescript
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvV3GIDeLfo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvV3GIDeLfo
- voxl 4y agoNo one has stopped studying strict types, they are alive and well
- labrador 4y agoNo one said that. Obviously software that can bring down the entire machine is still being written, but by highly skilled specialists. Meanwhile we've grown an army of coding bootcamp programmers churning out all the software that is eating the world (™ Marc Andreessen)
- nightski 4y agoThat's because the value of them churning out that software, however bad, so far has been greater than the alternative (none of it existing). I'd imagine this will hit a breaking point however (maybe it already is) due to hardware not advancing as rapidly. But who knows, maybe we are on the verge of another breakthrough and don't even know it. But once we hit the wall, things will shift.
- hayley-patton 4y ago> I wonder if this is a factor for the decline in software quality Jonathan Blow talks about in his video. Wouldn't hold my breath; I recall a tangent on programmers being "afraid of pointers". Depending on your favourite not-C-pointer way of managing memory, that's saying that use-after-free bugs are a sign of bad programmers, or shunning substructural/region/etc types for verifying that explicit memory management is correct.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago> I recall a tangent on programmers being "afraid of pointers" I've seen that too... It's pretty funny because in so many modern languages every reference is just a pointer we can't do arithmetic with.
- kelnos 4y agoI think when people say they are "afraid of pointers", they really mean they're afraid of manipulating pointers... that is, as you say, doing pointer math.
- bigbillheck 4y ago> I know younger programmers who don't even bother to check for errors The older programmers of today were once young, and many of them didn't bother to check for errors back then.
- labrador 4y agoThey did if they were C/C++ programmers because everyone would know if they didn't when the screen went sad. Maybe Java programmers. I don't know, I never touched the stuff.
- tialaramex 4y agoNo, they didn't, they just ignored the errors and most of the time they got away with it. That's what the Hello, World! error illustrates. The canonical "Hello, World!" in these languages actually ignores errors, and nobody cares. But it speaks to the general mindset behind C and C++ programmers. "Eh, it's fine". Until it isn't.
- labrador 4y agoYou're joking right? There's zero, zilch, nada need to check the error return from a Hello, World program. Hello World is a standard way to show you can compile and run a program. If you can't do Hello World, you can't do anything else. It's a good joke though. I'll probably steal it.