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Re:Why Don't Software Developers Use Static Analysis Tools t... by taeric on Friday June 26, 2015 @04:36AM (#9783020)
You'd be surprised. Probably at both, but I hasten to get it in the conversation that static analysis is more than just static typing. By a long shot.

To me, simple static analysis can be over sold to the point that it is worthless. I swear, I see more effort put into detecting tabs versus spaces than I do things that actually reliably cause bugs. Seriously, unless you are writing make files, I just can't bring myself to care on tabs.

However, using some of the more advanced static analysis tools that don't just show where you forgot to do a null check, but also show where you pass in a null value... That is truly impressive and fixes bugs. Even better, these are things that can be used to harden a code base without having to rewrite it.

Re:Why Don't Software Developers Use Static Analysis Tools t... by AnimalMuppet on Friday June 26, 2015 @12:11PM (#9785605)
Or, you used a pointer, then checked whether it was null.

This is why you keep re-running it, by the way. You had your null check at the top of the function, and then in maintenance someone added something new at the top, not realizing that it needed to be after the null check...

Re:Why Don't Software Developers Use Static Analysis Tools t... by dllthomas on Sunday June 28, 2015 @03:27PM (#9794706)
"You used a pointer, then checked whether it was null" is something easily enforced by a type system, incidentally.