* * * * *
                                        
                  A thought on static types vs. dynamic types
                                        
> The simple fact is, I would never choose to write shell scripts in a
> strongly type-checked language (unless someone were to write a scripting
> language that is as cheap and dirty as, say, bash). And I would never use a
> torque wrench to change a light bulb in my house when a crescent is handy.
> Type checking simply isn't a critical feature for the scripts that I write,
> and there is a certain cost in using languages that check types rigorously.
> 
> On the other hand, I would never be fully confident in a large system built
> on a DT (Dynamic Type) language. It's not because I don't trust the
> language. It's because I don't trust myself. An ST (Static Type) language
> constrains the types of things you can say in a way that helps you avoid
> erroneous constructions. But the cost is that you have to consciously
> choose the types, and sometimes you have to build the types from scratch.
> This cost is not zero, and it's not negligible, which is why I prefer to
> write shell scripts in an untyped language.
> 
> But the larger the system, the more the type system of a language gives me
> confidence that the components are being used correctly. Since tests get
> more expensive to write the larger the pieces to be tested become, it is
> very nice to have the compiler tell me right away that I've done something
> stupid or made a simple error than to wait for a test to tell me that.
> Although type checking does not necessarily imply correctness, for many
> types of algorithmically simple program components, it gets you 90% of the
> way there.
> 

“Johnny Come Lately [1]”

Which pretty much sums up why I prefer to use statically typed langauges (I
was probably the only one in college that liked programming in Ada). I tend
to think of programmers that prefer dynamic typed languages as sloppy
thinkers, but perhaps that's because all the languages I learned early on
were statically typed (especially Assembly were you had to explicitely
reserve memory for your variables).

[1] http://lambda-the-/

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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