| > wouldn't it be better to record this and make it available at static write-time I think you misunderstand my position. It's better for the creator to simply specify it when they write the code - i.e. static typing. > the type profiler makes no attempt whatsoever at discerning the "meaning" of the data Your examples are waaay beyond what I need or expect. What I need is for the program to recognize that, for a number, 123 and 456 are valid, but "abc" will never be. Conversely, for an identifier, no matter how many runs use values like 123, someday someone might provide the value "abc" and that's ok. Also, any code that attempts to sum up a collection of identifiers should not be runnable, even if the identifiers in question all happen to be numbers. This is something that static typing provides, and no amount of profiling will ever be able to divine. > In the vast majority of cases, you will find that your brain already has a very specific type in mind for each variable Sure, for the code I write. But I've seen plenty of code written by juniors where, upon inspection, it was completely inscrutable whether a given parameter expects an integer, a string, a brick wall or a banana. Which is all to say that my default position is unchanged: dynamic typing is unhelpful for anything larger than small, single-purpose scripts. |