Statically Typed Languages Encourage Bad Code

Re:Statically Typed Languages Encourage Bad Code by silentbicycle on Tuesday October 19, 2010 @10:56PM (#1809765)

If you're making (sweeping!) generalizations about static typing, but don't even address languages that do it well, it's a rather weak argument. That's like dismissing dynamic typing as a whole because of bugs caused by string / number coercion in PHP. (Or dismissing jugglers with two arms because they're cheating.)

On the other hand, if someone seriously proficient in OCaml were to criticize static typing (in general, not just implementation details in some given language), I'd be all ears.

Loud ignorance + linkbait title? Flagged. Python is a fine language, it's too bad some of its buzz is so ignorant.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Statically Typed Languages Encourage Bad Code by sz on Tuesday October 19, 2010 @11:49PM (#1809885)

Yep. Haskell is a perfect counterexample (everything is inferred).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Statically Typed Languages Encourage Bad Code by silentbicycle on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @12:04AM (#1809926)

Haskell has a lot of other quirks, for better and worse. Harrrrrdly perfect, but not touching that one.

The main point is that modern static typing eliminates those stupid, tedious, verbose type annotations, as well as the stupid Python "I decided to crash because calcVaule(input) does not exist, but OMFG how could I have possibly known until I got there" errors.

The article is complaining about the problems that have been thoroughly solved for decades. Which is totally cool; if you want me, I'll be here in the corner howling about Nixon and Disco.

[ Parent | on HN ]