2018-06-08 14:50 GMT+02:00 Thierry Goubier <thierry.goubier@gmail.com>:

Hi Ben,

Interesting find.

... snip ...

> Table 7 makes and interesting assertion that static types are more important
> for readability than preventing bugs.

This one is in line with Dan Luu meta-study that static typing catches
at best a small proportion of bugs.

Note that this is used in Smalltalk, when you write anInteger, aString
: you're using a form of typing for documentation.

Exactly!

And if you transpose this style to static typing you get things like

�� Cat *theCat = new Cat;

Being tainted, I always thought that is was noise...

You'd better rename your variable felix;)

Static typing may help the IDE (refactoring and navigating).

My POV is thus that you enter this information for the tools, not for the humans (compiler, navigator, refactoring engine, ...).

I have differently tainted colleagues still thinking that the type help them reading code...

So, IMO, this assertion reflects the dominant culture rather than intrinsic merits.

IOW, if you want to create a successfull language, just clone an existing one :(

��

Nicolas

By the way, I wrote for fun a small metalink-based run-time
type-checker using method argument names. To be used when running unit
tests :)

Regards,

Thierry