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Discussion on: The broken promise of static typing

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lewiscowles1986 profile image
Lewis Cowles

Have you considered that you may have actually measured known bug-count vs unknown? To me this is like like comparing pennies in a jar vs missed pay-checks... It's the unknown long-term problems with systems (rounding errors, off-by-one's, partial API regressions, and design flaws) that lead to the biggest problems.

It's for sure interesting, I'd love for there to be an answer, but I've been making the transition from dynamic -> static yo-yo'ing without any evidence for or against either for the general-case since the 90's.

Thanks for the article

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danlebrero profile image
Dan Lebrero

Hi Lewis,

Not sure if I understood you about the known vs unknown. Do you mean that for dynamically typed languages, there are bugs that have not been reported or found, while those same bugs would have been reported in a staticly typed lang?

I love the pennies vs paychecks analogy. I will steal it for a future blog post ;).

I am with you in the static vs dynamic debate, that is why I wanted to propose a different one: simple vs complex. On this one, I would position myself on the "simple-by-default" camp, were doing complex things was painful and non-idiomatic. What about you?

Thanks!

Dan

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lewiscowles1986 profile image
Lewis Cowles

Hi Dan,

You got the known vs unknown in one. Not knowing about a bug (it not being in issues) doesn't mean it doesn't exist as we found with the OpenSSL bugs a few years back.

I'm glad you enjoy my analogies I love using them as they generally help ;)

On simple vs Complex. I'm sure it's a false dichotomy overall but I definitely love the idea I keep being sold RE: simplicity.