Re: another take on hackers and painters

[Paul Graham <address@hidden>]

That's like saying that people who criticize Las Vegas
should annotate their criticism with how much time they've
spent there.  I've spent about two days in Las Vegas, but 
I  feel I understand *perfectly* what the place is about,
and that it's not for me.  Ditto for ML.

--pg

--Shriram Krishnamurthi wrote:
> I'm afraid your article, while interesting, simply reiterates tired
> and (I think) often invalid prejudices against static typing.  Though
> this isn't the focus of your article, it's not that far removed from
> the focal point, and it anyway gives me a chance to vent. (-:
> 
> It is absolutely true that in the extreme case, the "artistic
> programmer" needs a language without type restrictions.  This is
> because they are effectively building a non-trivial language
> themselves, whose type system may not mesh well (or at all) with that
> of the native language.  Even then, it's often possible to encode the
> second tier type system atop some universal representation in the
> first one, but one could fairly ask, to what end?
> 
> On the other hand, in a language with a good static type system, I
> think programmers run into these restrictions far less often than they
> might think.  A sufficiently crafty programmer will recognize when
> they are hitting the language's type restrictions, and will then be
> able to provide a lovely critique of the type system along with the
> application that is shackled by it.  There are surprisingly few such
> critiques, and the ratio of critiques to impassioned pleas for freedom
> grows vanishingly small.
> 
> People who criticize static typing should annotate their offering with
> an indication of how much ML they have written.  That would make them
> far more credible.
> 
> I suppose I've now tossed down the gauntlet, and you can always come
> back with "Oh, about a 100k lines, at which point I realized static
> typing was all bunk", and nothing would make my Scheming heart
> happier. (-:
> 
> Shriram