Re:PHP 8.1.0
by smt88 on Thursday November 25, 2021 @05:32PM
(#29345600)
Iterating on ideas is much quicker when the compiler tells you when you made a mistake or failed to change your code after changing your mind.
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Re:PHP 8.1.0
by thevagrant on Thursday November 25, 2021 @06:12PM
(#29345906)
Honestly, I don't see much difference. You learn either way. People may have preferences, that's fine. A compiler isn't a magical tool that creates bug free code.
A compiler with a good type system catches a mistake instantly instead of at runtime.
The difference in time it saves the dev can be anywhere from a few seconds to minutes per mistake.
Multiplied by hundreds of mistakes, it makes a huge difference. And that's not even getting into the advantages of better autocomplete for external libraries.
As someone who has written many thousands of lines of PHP, JS, TS, C#, Java, and Python, I now find it baffling that someone would start a project in 2021 without a great type system as a safety net.
The difference is massive. Computers are many orders of magnitude better at this kind of thing than humans, especially in a large application where changing the shape of a single data structure can have cascading effects throughout the entire code base; you simply will not catch things a typechecker will.
Re:PHP 8.1.0
by thevagrant on Friday November 26, 2021 @03:45AM
(#29348449)
An IDE does provide some help. Certainly, I'm not arguing against compilers. I was merely commenting on the "iterating on ideas is much quicker".