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This whole article is a reflection of a belief that I really don't like but is all too common these days. It's the idea that nothing is better than anything els

by tikhonj 12y ago

This whole article is a reflection of a belief that I really don't like but is all too common these days. It's the idea that nothing is better than anything else, everything is a trade-off and strong positive are inherently wrong. I don't buy it. It's a tacit assumption that, somehow, everything is on the Pareto frontier. Profoundly implausible. In the background, it's basically a hybrid appeal to moderation (all extreme positions are wrong) and popularity (if so many people are doing something, it can't be wrong). Never mind the fact that popularity is almost meaningless, driven by fashion more than anything, and that what's "extreme" is arbitrary and largely driven by popularity itself... This is how we get "worse is better"; this is how we get standards that are compromises ideal for nobody but still widely adopted because they're standard or because that seems like the thing to do or because that's what everyone else is doing or because " engineering". The worst part is that this all goes unsaid, assumed correct by default. Just the fact that we're having the discussion the article wants, and not this meta-discussion, implicitly elevates its premise! Some things are better than others. A strong debate between strong positions is healthier than an artificial social force reverting everyone back to mean. Now, all this is not to say the usual message about types is perfect. It could definitely be improved in many different ways. But not by muzzling, weakening or qualifying: not by most of the argument's suggestions. Especially ironic is the rhetorical techniques the author uses to argue against rhetoric. The one I personally find the most grating—beyond the ambient implication that everything is equal that I've just written about—is establishing cheap credibility by aligning himself with the camp he's arguing against. "I like X, but..." Or, in this case, "I use OCaml, but..." Then again, my pointing this out is probably ironic in the same way. Or is it?

skybrian 12y ago
It seems more unrealistic to assume everyone agrees on the same cost-benefit function. We are different people and value different things. So in any attempt at a proof involving what should be valued more, you have to state your assumptions and they're generally debatable.
- cantankerous 12y ago
  There's also the bit of refusing to agree to the same cost benefit function because it commits you to a standard that you can't back away from. I mean look at the global warming debate, for example.
jules 12y ago
I agree with your general sentiment but that's not what I got out of this article. The article doesn't say much about dynamic vs static typing, it merely says something about the arguments around dynamic vs static typing, and it's spot on in that respect. I personally believe static typing to be better than dynamic typing, but at the same time most of the arguments for static typing that I read on the internet are terrible or incredibly exaggerated.
briantakita 12y ago
"Better" is often a relative term based on somebody's perspective. To rate something as being "better", you have to clearly define what "better" is and have some sort of agreement that "better" is better for everybody. If you ignore the "dissenters" then you effectively dis-empower those people & silence their perspective. Is that "better"? There's a cost of reducing potential novelty. There's a benefit of increasing focus (perhaps increasing implemented novelty of downstream scopes).
weavejester 12y ago
This whole article is a reflection of a belief that I really don't like but is all too common these days. It's the idea that nothing is better than anything else, everything is a trade-off and strong positive are inherently wrong. I feel you've missed the point of the article. The author isn't making a judgement on whether static type systems are better than dynamic type systems, instead he's suggesting we increase the quality of the debate by discarding poor arguments.
pron 12y ago
> Some things are better than others. A strong debate between strong positions is healthier than an artificial social force reverting everyone back to mean. I agree in principle, but the fact that there are good arguments on either side of the debate, and neither of them has been able to conclusively prove that one approach is decidedly better than the other, turns the debate into an argument over preference rather than absolutes, which is a very different kind of debate. But I would even say something stronger: when it comes to programming languages, much (if not most or even practically all) of the arguments must eventually come down to psychology. If a programming language that can produce no bugs and still express useful programs were ever to be created, if that language is hard for people to use (because of human psychology), or even if people don't like using it -- I would say that that language is nearly useless, except for research purposes or maybe some domains where this property is important over all others (say, safety-critical embedded systems). So even if there is a "right answer" like you imply, the debate is in the realm of psychology -- not math or computer science -- and psychology, as we all know, does not usually yield hard answers even when it has answers at all. So while studying the properties of programming languages is computer science, their overall utility is (almost) purely within the realm of the social sciences. To repeat an example I've made a few times, if your job is to catch a ball you can't argue that teaching you to compute the ball's trajectory with a Newtonian formula is better than practicing a few times simply because the former is more mathematically rigorous. Which is best depends on which approach better fits your psychology. So here's my strong position: if someone debating programming languages denies that their general utility is mostly a matter of psychology rather than math, then that person is wrong!
deleted 12y ago
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by tikhonj 12y ago

skybrian 12y ago

It seems more unrealistic to assume everyone agrees on the same cost-benefit function. We are different people and value different things. So in any attempt at a proof involving what should be valued more, you have to state your assumptions and they're generally debatable.

cantankerous 12y ago
There's also the bit of refusing to agree to the same cost benefit function because it commits you to a standard that you can't back away from. I mean look at the global warming debate, for example.

jules 12y ago

I agree with your general sentiment but that's not what I got out of this article. The article doesn't say much about dynamic vs static typing, it merely says something about the arguments around dynamic vs static typing, and it's spot on in that respect. I personally believe static typing to be better than dynamic typing, but at the same time most of the arguments for static typing that I read on the internet are terrible or incredibly exaggerated.

briantakita 12y ago

"Better" is often a relative term based on somebody's perspective. To rate something as being "better", you have to clearly define what "better" is and have some sort of agreement that "better" is better for everybody. If you ignore the "dissenters" then you effectively dis-empower those people & silence their perspective. Is that "better"? There's a cost of reducing potential novelty. There's a benefit of increasing focus (perhaps increasing implemented novelty of downstream scopes).

weavejester 12y ago

This whole article is a reflection of a belief that I really don't like but is all too common these days. It's the idea that nothing is better than anything else, everything is a trade-off and strong positive are inherently wrong. I feel you've missed the point of the article. The author isn't making a judgement on whether static type systems are better than dynamic type systems, instead he's suggesting we increase the quality of the debate by discarding poor arguments.

pron 12y ago

> Some things are better than others. A strong debate between strong positions is healthier than an artificial social force reverting everyone back to mean. I agree in principle, but the fact that there are good arguments on either side of the debate, and neither of them has been able to conclusively prove that one approach is decidedly better than the other, turns the debate into an argument over preference rather than absolutes, which is a very different kind of debate. But I would even say something stronger: when it comes to programming languages, much (if not most or even practically all) of the arguments must eventually come down to psychology. If a programming language that can produce no bugs and still express useful programs were ever to be created, if that language is hard for people to use (because of human psychology), or even if people don't like using it -- I would say that that language is nearly useless, except for research purposes or maybe some domains where this property is important over all others (say, safety-critical embedded systems). So even if there is a "right answer" like you imply, the debate is in the realm of psychology -- not math or computer science -- and psychology, as we all know, does not usually yield hard answers even when it has answers at all. So while studying the properties of programming languages is computer science, their overall utility is (almost) purely within the realm of the social sciences. To repeat an example I've made a few times, if your job is to catch a ball you can't argue that teaching you to compute the ball's trajectory with a Newtonian formula is better than practicing a few times simply because the former is more mathematically rigorous. Which is best depends on which approach better fits your psychology. So here's my strong position: if someone debating programming languages denies that their general utility is mostly a matter of psychology rather than math, then that person is wrong!

deleted 12y ago

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