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by bajsejohannes
5011 days ago
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> dynamic (or "duck") typing Nit-pick: This post seem to say the dynamic typing and duck typing are the same thing. They're not. Duck-typing means looking up method names runtime by name, and not compile time by interface. Dynamic typing is a much bigger concept. |
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> Performance > Static typing can give you high, scalable and predictable efficiency, without the slow warm-up seen in many JIT compilers. These are important for interactive applications and games, for example.
static vs dynamic typing has not much to do with performance, at least as exposed here: the most widespread JIT out there is for a static language: Java, all the while both Python and Ruby can be compiled AOT (both to bytecode and to native code). Now type information could add some data for static analysis, which may bring some performance benefits but given how static typing is optional, such analysis (and following benefits) would only go so far.
> Compile-time and runtime type checking > Static typing makes it easier to find bugs and with less debugging (and with less staring at long stack traces)
Well, for the breadth and depth of Java and C# stack traces I have enjoyed, they can be equally confusing, just as dynamic typing stack traces can be equally informative. More often than not, a confounding stack trace is a code smell of some architectural issue.
> Grow your programs from dynamic to static typing > You can develop programs with dynamic types and only add static typing after your code has matured. This way you do not have maintain type declarations in initial development when the code is still changing rapidly.
This sounds interesting, but it also sounds like in reality, few areas would end up being typed and probably not enough for static typing to be meaningful. Humans are lazy, and programmers even more (that's why we tell machines to do stuff for us after all). I'm thinking a bit like for test suites, written after the fact or too late in the game. I guess that, just like tests, responsible developers will end up doing the right thing.
Maybe it's just the way it's worded and the project fundamentals are solid, but this sounds too much like a bullet list of "why dynamic typing is bad" (not that they're a silver bullet either) from someone who does not grok dynamic typing (and form the about page that does not seem to be the case, which only adds to my unease).
Anyway I'll keep mypy in my peripheral radar.