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I gave $150 and I hope every other Clojure developer does the same. I think this project is very important. Having a clean bridge from dynamic programing to typ

I gave $150 and I hope every other Clojure developer does the same. I think this project is very important. Having a clean bridge from dynamic programing to typed programming gives us an important way to document our own learning process. In my blog post "How ignorant am I, and how do I formally specify that in my code?" I tried to communicate why I think this is important. I am not sure I found the correct words, but the idea is that when I start on a problem, especially a problem I've never dealt with before, I don't want to specify a contract because I consider myself too ignorant to specify a contract. The flip side of that is when you see a contract in my code, you know that you are looking at a bit of code where I feel I have overcome ignorance and learned enough to specify something strict. "http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/how-ignorant-am-i-and-how-do-i-specify-that" http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/how-ignorant-am-i-and...

calibraxis 11y ago
Might want to fix that link by removing the rightmost quote. Thanks!
dllthomas 11y ago
Interesting. I love the notion of specifying (implicitly or explicitly) your level of confidence in code or model. That said, I find my experience differs around the following: "[W]hen I start on a problem, especially a problem I've never dealt with before, I don't want to specify a contract because I consider myself too ignorant to specify a contract." I find that's precisely when I find types the most valuable. I can start to sketch out the properties that I think should hold, and the type checker helps me think ahead and catch inconsistencies before I've coded all the way to them. It also helps me write not-quite-right code at the outset with confidence, knowing that as I discover that I'm wrong about things I will have assistance in finding where I am wrong about things, and hopefully more quickly get to sufficiently right and sufficiently complete code. I recognize that much of this is subjective, may well not apply to everyone, and might even be wrong (it's a hard thing to measure)... but I thought I'd share my POV.

calibraxis 11y ago

Might want to fix that link by removing the rightmost quote. Thanks!

dllthomas 11y ago

Interesting. I love the notion of specifying (implicitly or explicitly) your level of confidence in code or model. That said, I find my experience differs around the following: "[W]hen I start on a problem, especially a problem I've never dealt with before, I don't want to specify a contract because I consider myself too ignorant to specify a contract." I find that's precisely when I find types the most valuable. I can start to sketch out the properties that I think should hold, and the type checker helps me think ahead and catch inconsistencies before I've coded all the way to them. It also helps me write not-quite-right code at the outset with confidence, knowing that as I discover that I'm wrong about things I will have assistance in finding where I am wrong about things, and hopefully more quickly get to sufficiently right and sufficiently complete code. I recognize that much of this is subjective, may well not apply to everyone, and might even be wrong (it's a hard thing to measure)... but I thought I'd share my POV.