The sky is not falling – about the supposed end of dynamic languages

Re:The sky is not falling – about the supposed end of dynami... by incepted on Sunday November 29, 2015 @10:56AM (#10644880)

It's obvious you think it's absurd and given your heavy involvement in Clojure, your reaction is not unexpected. But you are still not addressing the main claim of the articles (that no new dynamically typed language will ever emerge again and be successful) and also missing why statically typed languages have won (it's not just correctness guarantees, it's also the automatic refactorings they enable, which are impossible to achieve with dynamically typed languages, and performance).

Clojure and its family of language will be a thing of the past in a few years from now (Clojure is not even a thing of the present actually, given its minuscule mind share on the JVM).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The sky is not falling – about the supposed end of dynami... by ane on Sunday November 29, 2015 @11:05AM (#10644932)

Elixir isn't that old and it'll be interesting to see if it caches on. It's basically Erlang with a nicer syntax and some new ideas.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The sky is not falling – about the supposed end of dynami... by sanderjd on Sunday November 29, 2015 @07:22PM (#10646860)

Elixir (and Erlang itself, actually) are definitely the vanguard of dynamically typed languages at the moment. I think this is because they aren't just convenient to write "normal" code in (like Ruby, Python, JS, etc.), they also come with major advantages in writing concurrent and distributed code, which is increasingly important. BEAM is also a particularly good runtime with better performance (especially memory) characteristics than many of its dynamically typed competitors.

I think this is the counter-argument to the original claim; new dynamically typed languages can be successful by offering convenience for important functionality. Even so, I think type annotations to aid static analysis (which Elixir has and JS will likely have in the future) will be an important feature.

I think the bar has simply been raised for new languages with both static and dynamic type systems. The former can no longer be boilerplate-y, inflexible, and inconvenient, and the latter can no longer be statically uncertain and hard to reason about. This is a good thing.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The sky is not falling – about the supposed end of dynami... by yogthos on Sunday November 29, 2015 @11:04AM (#10644926)

I am addressing the main claim of the article quite clearly. Static typing adds complexity and there's no evidence that the added complexity results in any tangible benefits.

Therefore, my prediction is that dynamic typing isn't going anywhere unless some empirical evidence appears that clearly demonstrates the advantages of static typing. Seeing how long static typing has been around I wouldn't hold my breath on that.

If you think that static languages have won then you must live in a very special bubble seeing how pretty much all of the web runs on JavaScript.

Having such strong convictions in absence of any empirical evidence is simply faith and static typing seems to just be a religious experience for some people. Many advocates are like bible thumpers coming to your door and telling you to accept monads into your heart. Naturally these are the loudest elements of the community who live in their own little echo chamber.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The sky is not falling – about the supposed end of dynami... by sanderjd on Sunday November 29, 2015 @07:02PM (#10646769)

I liked your article and generally think you have lots of good thoughts, so I want to give you some color on why I think you're getting downvoted here (though I didn't downvote you), so that you don't just think it is because of "bible thumpers".

You seem to be missing that jasod's claim was that the "main claim of the article" is "that he predicts the next wave of successful languages will have static checking but also look & feel like a "dynamic" one made possible by smarter compiler technologies such as type inferencing." You haven't said anything in this thread about "the next wave of successful languages" one way or the other.

> If you think that static languages have won then you must live in a very special bubble seeing how pretty much all of the web runs on JavaScript.

That's true, but has nothing to do with the claim about "the next wave of successful languages" because javascript is clearly part of the last wave (or really, the one before).

You seem to be arguing (in an increasingly heated tone) a broader point (which may be right or wrong) in a thread attempting to focus on a more narrow one.

[ Parent | on HN ]