Re:38% of bugs at Airbnb could have been prevented by using ...
by scrollaway on Monday February 11, 2019 @12:01AM
(#19132198)
> First to disagree with the GP's claim that a 38% difference between languages was 'whopping'
??? You're comparing LOCs and number of bugs. That 320% larger java code might have 50% less bugs and may have taken 50% less time to write. Terse code is harder and usually takes longer to write than expressive code.
Yes. I'm making two claims. First to disagree with the GP's claim that a 38% difference between languages was 'whopping':
> What greater 'tax' could you possibly conceive of than a whopping 38%
The fact that the type system isn't entirely to blame is also clear looking at the ruby and python sizes. Ruby and python have very similar type systems, but the ruby code is only about half the size of its python equivalent.
My second claim is that if we did the same comparison with javascript and typescript, typescript would be bigger. I don't have any stats for this though - just lots of experience. The type system seems to push code in a bit more of a classical OO direction because there aren't higher kinded types, associated types, or any of that fun stuff.
As others have said it'd be fascinating to compare typescript and purescript / elm codebases. I'd expect the haskell-derived languages would come out way ahead on expressiveness. Its constantly surprising to me that we don't have any actual numbers.