Could Python supplant Java?

[Chris Barker]

You know, it kind of surprises me that I have seen no mention of
Pycheckder in this whole thread:

http://pychecker.sourceforge.net/

Frankly, this thread has really rambled on too long. I think most of us
agree that:

Dynamic typing provides a lot of advantages for faster and easier development

Static type checking provides some safety from some kinds of bugs.

The kinds of bugs type checking protects you from are less important on
small projects (scripts) that large multi-developer projects.

The only question that is under debate is whether the advantages of type
checking's safety outweigh the advanatages of dynamic typing. Most of
the folks on this list feel that the advatnages of dynamic typing
outwiegh the disadvantages, even for large projects. The largeest
project I have done is 16k LOC and 3 developers. I can tell you that
static type chacking would have caught maybe a half a dozen bugs for me,
and that I cought and found those early on anyway. I cant say if that
experience would translate to a project 10 or 100 times as big, but I
suspect it would.

You really can't have both dynamic typing and compiler type checking,
but Pychecker can catch a number of the same bugs that static type
checking might catch, so it's a nice middle ground.

Now let's put it to rest!!!

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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