What I Expect From a Programming Language

Re:What I Expect From a Programming Language by jfb on Sunday January 06, 2013 @09:23PM (#5018895)

I think that static and dynamic type systems are classic incommensurable goods [1]. There's no way to pick between them based on some sort of value calculus; you just have to toss your hat in one ring or the other and live with the weaknesses as well as the strengths of your chosen approach.

[1] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/value-incommensurable

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Re:What I Expect From a Programming Language by jacques_chester on Sunday January 06, 2013 @10:10PM (#5019062)

I think people pick dynamic more often because of the reward schedule. Dynamic languages don't dish out as many errors upfront; most of the time it'll "work"-as-written. Immediate positive feedback.

Meanwhile the static typing compiler is spitting grumpy errors about some nitpicktastic piece of fluff it spotted. Immediate negative feedback.

So given the weekend-new-language thing, which example leaves a better impression?

Basically -- generalising enormously -- dynamic languages reward in the short term and punish in the long term; static languages are the opposite.

But human cognition is dreadful at long term prediction or comparison. So static languages will always be underrepresented unless, I dunno, Haskell compilers start doling out XP for fixing errors in your code.

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Re:What I Expect From a Programming Language by jfb on Sunday January 06, 2013 @10:13PM (#5019072)

But the overall calculus, in terms of, say, "productivity" (which is the hand-waviest of hand-waveries) is going to zero out. Or at least, that's my contention, based on these facts (∅) and twenty years of opinion and anecdote.

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Re:What I Expect From a Programming Language by jacques_chester on Sunday January 06, 2013 @10:32PM (#5019120)

The problem is that the hand-waving could conceal a lot of useful variables -- and different people will care about different variables.

So one variable might be "time to customer value", and dynamic languages have been steadily dominating this space. But another variable might be "lifetime cost of defects" and static languages might come out in front by simply precluding many classes of defect.

And just like that we're back to trading off the long term and short term.

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