Re:Write tests. Not too many. Mostly integration (2017)
by chriswarbo on Friday February 01, 2019 @06:24AM
(#19053280)
Static types do complement testing quite nicely; and more involved sorts of verification, for those prepared to do it.
> I'd argue this is more cost effective than tests
It depends on when the types are introduced.
Choosing to write a project in a strong statically typed language might be quite low cost. This often depends on library availability, e.g. pick a language like Python and there might be off-the-shelf libraries to do most of the heavy lifting; pick, say, StandardML and this will probably need to be written in-house.
Trying to add static types to an existing project might be quite difficult, and may give us hardly any confidence in the code. For example, if we're adding optional/gradual types to our code, but that information keeps getting lost when passing data through an untyped third-party library.
> I'd argue this is more cost effective than tests
It depends on when the types are introduced.
Choosing to write a project in a strong statically typed language might be quite low cost. This often depends on library availability, e.g. pick a language like Python and there might be off-the-shelf libraries to do most of the heavy lifting; pick, say, StandardML and this will probably need to be written in-house.
Trying to add static types to an existing project might be quite difficult, and may give us hardly any confidence in the code. For example, if we're adding optional/gradual types to our code, but that information keeps getting lost when passing data through an untyped third-party library.