Who's minister of propaganda this week?

[Daniel Klein]

On 16 Mar 2001 21:46:29 GMT, qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
wrote:

> In statically typed languages I use most of my errors
>(over 80%) are detected at compile time.
>
>Most of them are type errors (e.g. mismatching the number of
>arguments) or name binding errors (e.g. forgotten module imports or
>using a parameter which is not present in this function after some
>reorganization).

Yes, but  any reasonably tested program will catch these kinds of errors
anyway...or perhaps you don't test things. :-) It's a mistake to rely on static
type checknig as a substitute for unit testing.

Python (and Smalltalk) go one step further by 'hiding' the compilation step
thus making for a shorter development cycle and legendary productivity gains.

Having dealt with both Java and Python, I can confirm that once you are use to
a dynamically typed language, variable declarations become like training
wheels; once you learn how to 'ride the bike' they just get in the way.

Daniel Klein