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by wasd884 2832 days ago
Dynamic types weren't a mistake, but they were overused IMO. It's technically scripting, not programming, but can you imagine if Bash files were type hinted? For small scripts, solo projects or quick fixes, dynamic typing is great because it's fast! On the flip side, large codebases should (on the whole) not use dynamic types because of all the safety they fail to provide! As you said, most dynamically typed languages are moving towards some sort of type hinting and that's because high quality developers demand it when working on medium to large projects.
1 comments
strzibny 2832 days ago
> It's technically scripting, not programming

Nope. Dynamic types have nothing to do with scripting vs programming. What a nonsense!

Sorry I had to:).

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wasd884 2832 days ago
You misunderstood me. I agree that scripting and programming have nothing to do with dynamic types.

> It's technically scripting, not programming, but can you imagine if Bash files were type hinted?

I was clarifying that writing Bash files was scripting and not programming.

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ttsda 2832 days ago
How is writing bash files not programming though?

I understand it's historically been called 'scripting' instead, but 'technically' it's as much of a programming language as Python is, don't you think?

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dx87 2832 days ago
"Technically" of course it's just as much of a programming language, but "practically" it's normally used to kick off other programs, and is just glue meant to pass input and output between programs. FWIW, when people use Python for small automation tasks, I usually hear them referred to as scripts instead of programs. Program seems to imply that it's useful on its own, script implies that it doesn't serve a purpose besides running other programs that are generally useful.
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wasd884 2832 days ago
I might be being a bit "old hat", but I thought a programming language was one that you had to to compile (such as C) whereas a scripting language was one that was interperated (such as Python). I could be wrong but there appears to be some similar lines of thought on this.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17253545/scripting-langu...

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