No Java 7, The End Game

Re:No Java 7, The End Game by fauigerzigerk on Tuesday October 12, 2010 @03:27PM (#1784565)

Statically typed code is only type-safe as long as you don't use any meta programming techniques. But that means you have to write and test much more code. More code means more errors. Also, being forced to test more may cause dynamically typed code to be more reliable at the end of the day. But that's all speculation. I don't think we have any empirical evidence on that and hence I disagree with the general claim that dynamically typed languages are less reliable.

I write mostly statically typed code and I do appreciate what the compiler does for me. Also, I find statically typed code more readable and self-explanatory sometimes. It's ultimately faster as well. It's a tradeoff though, and since JavaScript is already present on mobiles anyway, I don't see the advantage of adding yet another VM.

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Re:No Java 7, The End Game by thesz on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @06:51AM (#1786719)

>Statically typed code is only type-safe as long as you don't use any meta programming techniques.

MetaOCaml: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_Caml#MetaOCaml TemplateHaskell: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/6.12.2/html/users_guide/temp... "A Verified Staged Interpreter is a Verified Compiler (Multi-stage Programming with Dependent Types)": http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.64.3...

I think that metaprogramming techniques would only gain from strong types.

I don't agree with most points of your comment, but I do not think I have strong arguments against.

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Re:No Java 7, The End Game by fauigerzigerk on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @07:35AM (#1786772)

The MetaOCaml example is certainly interesting but what it does is increase speed, not reliability. In this case, the type (in some general sense) of n is known at compile time, so the compiler can guarantee that whatever is generated at runtime conforms to that type.

But that's not the type of meta programming that depends on runtime discovery of entirely new information, say, an ORM that discovers changes in the database schema. That's the type of meta programming that made Rails so popular and productive (and slow) for some cases. Obviously, it is impossible to provide compile time guarantees about something that is unknown at compile time.

But I tend to agree with you that it is desirable to have correctness proofs at compile time wherever possible.

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