Re:Strong typing, a hill I'm willing to die on
by iopq on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @11:07AM
(#37766278)
There's ONE argument that I'm partial to:
if you get the static type system wrong once, there's no going back
Take for example, Rust: mut, Send, Copy, Drop, Debug, dyn have all their warts because they are special and you can't fix them because you'll break previous code.
In a gradual typing language you could potentially bolt-on your own type system as a package where it just runs the type checker if you want one. It just so happens people who favor these gradual typing systems don't do a good job of creating those typing systems because they are not that into types in the first place.
But in theory, this kind of a system would let you not worry about types when prototyping the system, then put some bounds later based on your requirements.
if you get the static type system wrong once, there's no going back
Take for example, Rust: mut, Send, Copy, Drop, Debug, dyn have all their warts because they are special and you can't fix them because you'll break previous code.
In a gradual typing language you could potentially bolt-on your own type system as a package where it just runs the type checker if you want one. It just so happens people who favor these gradual typing systems don't do a good job of creating those typing systems because they are not that into types in the first place.
But in theory, this kind of a system would let you not worry about types when prototyping the system, then put some bounds later based on your requirements.