Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Thaxll 1572 days ago
> Almost every time I've ever tried to silence the type checker (in any other language) it resulted in a bug.

What does it even mean? You can't silence a type checker.
2 comments
HideousKojima 1572 days ago
You can in JS/TS and Python. Technically you could even do it in a language with a fairly strong type system like C# or Java by casting to object or dynamic, though the code using the cast object after that will probably be very unidiomatic.
link
Thaxll 1572 days ago
Can't you cast to any in Rust as well?
link
sondr3 1572 days ago
To expand on the others, unlike in TS/JS, Python etc you can cast to the `Any`-trait but cannot use it as if it is any value, you need to convert it to the type you want and then handle the errors. A function that accepts `&str` will never accept a `Any` value, unlike in TS where you can override the type checker using `as`. Worth noting that TypeScript's type system is unsound [0] too.

[0]: https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/type-compatibil...

link
fzzzy 1572 days ago
No. Rust does not have the equivalent of Object or void *.
link
vladvasiliu 1572 days ago
There's the Any trait [0]. Not sure if this is exactly like void* in C, but this doesn't look particularly ergonomic to use.

[0] https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/any/index.html

link
tasn 1572 days ago
Exactly what the sibling comment said, you can do it in many languages. Also, the comment I replied to suggested just that ("cast to any"), which is the context. :)
link