Re:Strong typing, a hill I'm willing to die on
by littlestymaar on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @07:55PM
(#37773287)
> The research out there found no meaningful difference between both styles
I don't know which research you're thinking about, but if it's the one I've seen, it was empirical analysis and it's worthless because it's subject to survivor bias: whatever the tool you're using to make a program, it's going to be polished just as much as needed for it to fit its market, or it will die, simple as that.
If one paradigm lead to much more bugs per written line of code, but you're using it anyway for mission critical stuff, then you'll fix those bugs or fail. On the other hand, if one other paradigm leads to very little bugs compared to others, but you're using it somewhere where reliability doesn't matter, then the few bugs that are there from the beginning will stay there.
We can even call that the iron rule of bugs: No matter what tools you use, your code will contain roughly as many bugs as your business can tolerate.
The real question is how much effort does it take to achieve the same level, but it's obviously harder to study.
I don't know which research you're thinking about, but if it's the one I've seen, it was empirical analysis and it's worthless because it's subject to survivor bias: whatever the tool you're using to make a program, it's going to be polished just as much as needed for it to fit its market, or it will die, simple as that.
If one paradigm lead to much more bugs per written line of code, but you're using it anyway for mission critical stuff, then you'll fix those bugs or fail. On the other hand, if one other paradigm leads to very little bugs compared to others, but you're using it somewhere where reliability doesn't matter, then the few bugs that are there from the beginning will stay there.
We can even call that the iron rule of bugs: No matter what tools you use, your code will contain roughly as many bugs as your business can tolerate.
The real question is how much effort does it take to achieve the same level, but it's obviously harder to study.