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I disagree that it is just handwaving. I assert that I gave lots of evidence, namely that the scope of what you need to test to assure correct operation of your
by sink 11y ago
I disagree that it is just handwaving. I assert that I gave lots of evidence, namely that the scope of what you need to test to assure correct operation of your program is much narrower.
You can reason about that intuitively even, without trying to prove anything. The less stuff I need to test, the less stuff that my brain needs to think about.
I'm not quite sure what kind of evidence you're looking for. I'm not quite sure that you calling all of the evidence I provided as handwaving is valid, either!
But I can give you all kinds of anecdotal evidence if you like? I gave, I think, two pretty concrete but general examples.
- mpweiher 11y agoYou are still confusing logical inferences from unproven assertions with evidence. You claim that what you need to test is narrower, and I understand your reasoning as to why you think that this is true, but there is no evidence that your claims are actually true. On the other hand, there was a paper just recently (can't currently find it), with empirical evidence that surprisingly few tests were required to weed out large swathes of potential misbehavior, much fewer than could reasonably be expected. Or there is Robert Smallshire's data mining of github errors that showed type errors in dynamically typed languages as being exceedingly rare (1-2%), when everyone just knows that they must be common and problematic.
- sink 11y agoWe could both give each other empirical evidence all day. I wouldn't really call my assertions unproven. Speaking of referential transparency and equational reasoning is kind of the core of a lot of computer science. I'm not really sure what kind of evidence you are asking for. I will say that I think some programming languages are more interesting than others, and some are a more productive, better use of time than others.