I think, type checking could bring value at a large scale: huge codebases, bigger teams (this post shares some thoughts on this topic).
For example, when you work on a large application you might not know all the internal APIs; type checking could help you to avoid Undefined method foo for NilClass kind of errors when writing code using these unknown APIs. Documentation could also help but it could easily get out of sync.
Refactoring with type system is also much easier and faster even if you have a decent test coverage: when test fails you have to spend time to figure out why; when type checking fails you know the exact place in code. That becomes useful when you have hundreds of such places to change.
Totally disagree that type checking helps with refactoring. My experience with Java and C# is exactly the opposite. It becomes a large pain to either a) need to change the param of a method to a different type or b) add a parameter to an existing method. Yes tools like resharper help, but most of the time you play compiler jujutsu trying to find just the right generic or whatever type necessary to satisfy all your existing code.
These changes become more cumbersome to implement. Duck typing allows these kind of changes with ease, and ruby method signatures are usually pretty flexible with keyword args, option splats etc being common.
I think we’ll tested systems mean type checking is totally superfluous. I moved to ruby from a C# /Java background and I have not missed types/generics one iota in Ruby. Keep ruby ducky :)
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I think, type checking could bring value at a large scale: huge codebases, bigger teams (this post shares some thoughts on this topic).
For example, when you work on a large application you might not know all the internal APIs; type checking could help you to avoid
Undefined method foo for NilClasskind of errors when writing code using these unknown APIs. Documentation could also help but it could easily get out of sync.Refactoring with type system is also much easier and faster even if you have a decent test coverage: when test fails you have to spend time to figure out why; when type checking fails you know the exact place in code. That becomes useful when you have hundreds of such places to change.
If type checking fixed this we would never have seen
NullPointerExceptionin Java/.NET static typed worlds.Totally disagree that type checking helps with refactoring. My experience with Java and C# is exactly the opposite. It becomes a large pain to either a) need to change the param of a method to a different type or b) add a parameter to an existing method. Yes tools like resharper help, but most of the time you play compiler jujutsu trying to find just the right generic or whatever type necessary to satisfy all your existing code.
These changes become more cumbersome to implement. Duck typing allows these kind of changes with ease, and ruby method signatures are usually pretty flexible with keyword args, option splats etc being common.
I think we’ll tested systems mean type checking is totally superfluous. I moved to ruby from a C# /Java background and I have not missed types/generics one iota in Ruby. Keep ruby ducky :)