Re: another take on hackers and painters

[Steve Dekorte <address@hidden>]

Jan-Willem Maessen wrote:
> Steve Dekorte <steve@dekorte.com> writes:
>> People often claim that complex programs require static typing to 
>> work.
>> I like to ask them if they consider the Web a complex program(as web
>> request is basically a dynamic message send). The Web has bad links,
>> but their cost is insignificant when weighed against the cost involved
>> with avoiding this possibly. I think there may be a lesson there.
>
> That users have grown far too used to broken software? :-)

That would be a good question if most the broken software people are 
used to wasn't written in statically typed languages. :-)

To be fair, I feel a fair degree of static typing is essential in 
weakly typed systems but a deadweight in strongly typed ones. 
Unfortunately, it's still fashionable to use weakly typed languages for 
high level programming. And I would guess that  experience with the 
usefulness of static typing in weakly typed languages causes many to 
incorrectly infer that the same should be true of strongly typed 
languages.

Cheers,
Steve
"The truth will set you free,
but first it will probably piss you off." - Anonymous