[natec425]

> This sounds like C# as written by people that don't really know or like C#. If you're stuffing everything into strings or a dynamic, you missed the point of the type system in a very serious way.

I agree, but I think it is the reality. Software development is a job, not divine appointment. And assuming it is reality, I think the best short term gain those developers isn't doubling down on type systems.

> It also strikes me as strange that people can't be bothered to use the type system provided by the language, but they can be bothered to maintain and add unit tests for their programs. Correctness enforced by types is fused with the code; if you get the types right, you should be all set. There's no additional maintenance beyond making sure that the code compiles.

I'm totally with you. I remember a friend being so impressed when a hypothesis test caught a bug in an example that I set up. The funny thing was that I made the example from a function over an F# Union. A lot of people seem to get super irritated by compiler errors but seem to be really impressed by clever testing. I think it has to do with the error messages. Property based testing frameworks tend to show you the simplest concrete example of your error. Type checkers tend to show you the most abstract example of your error. Maybe if type checkers started to to incorporate more concrete examples of error, people would generally find them more appealing.

[rntz]

> Property based testing frameworks tend to show you the simplest concrete example of your error. Type checkers tend to show you the most abstract example of your error. Maybe if type checkers started to to incorporate more concrete examples of error, people would generally find them more appealing.

I think this is a really important insight! And in fact, there is some recent research about making type checkers produce counterexamples: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/5355. Ergonomics of type systems is an unfortunately understudied area.