dynamic typing questions

[John Roth]

"Robert Brewer" <fumanchu at amor.org> wrote in message
news:mailman.361.1071867283.9307.python-list at python.org...
John Roth wrote:
> Look into Test Driven Development (see Kent
> Beck's book by that title.) As Jason says, unit testing
> will pretty much eliminate any advantages of static typing,
> leaving only the disadvantages.
>
> Also, pervasive testing has so many other advantages
> that I'm beginning to think that debuggers were the
> single worst invention in history.

Zuh? Unit testing doesn't replace a good debugger; they work together.
Unit testing can only show you THAT a test has failed--it can't show you
where, how, or why. Think of exception handling (and especially
tracebacks) as a mini-debugger.


[JR]
However, the reports from people actually using Test First
seriously is that they're forgetting how to use the debugger!
When you work one test a time, if something breaks you know
it's the last five lines you entered. You very seldom need to
mess around with the debugger to figure out what you did,
and if you do, you need to refactor whatever it was - it's
too complicated.

John Roth
[/JR]


FuManChu