[trixie_]

Generally no one uses dynamic typing for the abilities it gives you. Do you declare string variables to later assign them to numbers? Do you dynamically add new functions and properties to objects? Do you ever really need the flexibility that dynamic typing is giving you?

If not then why are you using a dynamically typed language? If you're not using it's abilities then it doesn't sound like the right tool for the job.

It's like a cost/benefit analysis where none of the benefits you're using, and the cost is the total inability to validate, refactor, and navigate your code base.

[saagarjha]

> Do you declare string variables to later assign them to numbers? Do you dynamically add new functions and properties to objects? Do you ever really need the flexibility that dynamic typing is giving you?

Yes, yes, and no. I do most of my work in languages that prevent the first two, but when I do have access to this kind of runtime trickery I do use it when useful.

[viraptor]

> Do you declare string variables to later assign them to numbers? Do you dynamically add new functions and properties to objects? Do you ever really need the flexibility that dynamic typing is giving you?

The issue is not "Do you purposefully do those things?", but rather "Do you have a call stack where you can't guarantee it won't happen by accident?" Type checking is not relevant when you know what will happen and want the dynamic/ducktyping behaviour.

Another issue is: I'd use a different framework which doesn't use Ruby, but this was the most productive framework at the time the codebase was started, and nobody will port that many lines of code to a non-dynamic language now. So the best course of action is to validate the current code is not overly-dynamic.

[joelbluminator]

I think most rubyists do benefit from dynamic types. How easy would it be to build rspec and Rails in java? The whole dependency injection thing in Spring is in part a by product of types making it way harder to test things. That's just one example.

[nevertoolate]

Can you give a concrete code example you are talking about? What is your problem with DI with spring? Why do you feel it is a problem with static type checker?

[jashmatthews]

DI for testability adds complexity to code and reduces readability. In Ruby it's almost always unncessessary to use DI because in Ruby you can stub at runtime.

In other statically typed langues like Rust the type system itself eliminates the need for a lot of these tests but at the cost of mental overhead of expressing your logic in a way which will satisy the type system.

[joelbluminator]

What jashmatthews said mostly. It adds bloat and isn't very readable. It's another "ceremony" that together with types, interfaces, generics etc increases lines of code. I can see the benefits for huge projects, but I don't like this way by default out of the box.