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by rkrzr
3456 days ago
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> since values carry types you're actually working with more information. Only for the specific value that you are reasoning about. If you want to reason about all possible values, then you are de-facto reasoning about their types. > Most of the time the types I'm interested in are closer to concepts (sequences, mappings) than concrete classes. But sequences and mapping are also types, right? You can abstract types to type classes (i.e. whole classes of types, e.g. all types that can be iterated over, or all types that are ordered etc.) and also reason about them. > Thats where having immutable dynamically typed values is better than having statically typed mutable ones. Sure, ideally you want to have immutable statically typed functions and values, since you can then do some equational reasoning and prove certain properties of your program. |
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True, but a variable can only ever have one value at any given time; knowing a variable is an int is good, knowing a variable is the same int value throughout its extent is better :)
> But sequences and mapping are also types, right?
Yes, but they're not concrete types and don't map to a single interface either. When they do these interfaces are compositions of smaller interfaces anyways and I prefer to reason about these smaller parts.
Which means I'm reasoning more about the shape of the data than the actual type implementing it, and that to me is closer to a value than a type. Its the same with type-classes, you're reasoning about the features of a value rather than the specific type implementing said features.
> ideally you want to have immutable statically typed functions and values
For functions we're talking about purity rather than immutability (which qualifies variables). Type systems also are very leaky abstractions; null pointer exceptions, can't limit the range of value, requiring more code which introduces its own bugs and complexity and more.
From experience I prefer a smaller dynamically typed codebase that has tests for the trickier parts over a statically typed codebase (even if tested). The productivity difference is startling and the resulting quality is about the same.