[pjerem]

I honestly struggle to understand what can be a « small » type error. I would be happy to read an example.

By definition, this can only happen if you use the wrong type in the wrong place : it can only be a huge bug or there is some dark magic I don’t understand.

I know a lot of langages manage to let you use strings as numbers and vice versa but I don’t see another case where you would voluntarily pass a wrong type. And this is not incompatible with string typing as long as the langage provides auto-casting.

[cerved]

There's a lot of intricacies that can happen. Let's say specifying an int with the wrong precision.

This can lead to a runtime error, or it can make no difference whatsoever. Enforcing that consistency in the compiler is powerful but is also another obstacle to someone who's just trying to get a simple example working.

Just because there is a type error by no means qualifies it as a huge bug. That's why JavaScript and the web stack in general is successful. It fails gracefully. Instead of a rendering a website completely unusable, an error perhaps only renders a button in the wrong place.

Contrast this with Scala, where a subtle type error refuses to build at all. If you're green, hunting down the source of that error can be very arduous.

Failing at compile time can be very powerful but it can also add another obstacle to overcome.

[pjerem]

I understand what you mean because I come from there (started with PHP and Python more than a decade ago). So maybe it’s just a preference bias on my side but I never thought that a compiler preventing errors added difficulty. On the contrary, I remember that PHP was painful to debug when you sometimes had nothing shown in the browser, no errors at all (tbh, it’s old like maybe PHP 3 or 4) then the same thing happened in JS.

It never happened since I switched to strictly typed langages and tbh, you rarely compile type errors if you have an IDE that shows in bright red that you are wrong.

The few times last years I had to write some Python, I really felt uncomfortable and it was really hard not to make mistakes and not to trust my IDE auto completion.

My brain is now plugged on « if I write something that is not proposed, it must be red ».

But again, I understand your point and maybe it’s just me.

[cerved]

Imho, the type system should either be really strict and strong like in Scala or it should very loose like in TypeScript. Anything in between is just a nuisance.

Btw, there are other tools than compilers that can analyze your code for errors. Try PyCharm