Can you elaborate on why complexity increases?
In any large statically typed program, 2 out of the 3 lines exist to make the compiler happy rather than the software developer.
Static typing is a terrible terrible way to develop code once you start measuring it objectively.
I use Scala and the syntax is pretty slim to get very rich typing. Love it compared to non-static typing.
Dynamically typed programs have much simpler structures and are much easier to reason about and test than their static typed counterparts.
The larger the program you write with static typing, the worse it becomes compared to it's dynamically typed counterpart. The internal complexity of statically typed programs grows at a much higher rate. This increases development times and decreases program correctness.
Through I don't think I can really do a fair comparsion with a functional language like Scala. I've only used Scala for 2 weeks on a single project. Functional languages tend to increase code correctness by trading away performance.
Consider a simple program that adds 2 numbers: a & b together. In a dynamically typed language, this would be a + b. In a statically typed language, once you consider overflow and underflow, you will likely have a hundred lines of code.
This creeps up again in JSON parsing where the types really are defined at runtime.
But the most general case is people creating complex and hard to understand types in their code, which they then export to unsuspecting developers to use. e.g. The type of stuff that forced C++ to introduce the auto keyword.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52376716/c-overloading-o...
literally a single line of code to overload an operator.
anyway, if you don't consider error states in your dynamic implementation and you do this in static then yes, it could be simpler. But static doesn't force you to consider error conditions - just like this C++ example does not.
and yes, if you fall back on javascript notions of default cross-type arithmetic (1 + "1" = ?) then you will get something, and if you take great care to structure your code you may get something useful as a side-effect, but, this is not meaningfully different from the error-state for most people. Getting [] or "11" isn't the expected outcome unless you've come to expect that quirk of javascript, and is something that a static compiler would rightfully complain about - because a user asking for an undefined operation computed across incompatible types seems like a classic type error. If it's not, then just define the operators that are meaningful to you - and you could define it as an interface if you wanted it to work with a bunch of classes etc.
Again though, the complaint elsewhere that "a lot of this debate just ends up being dynamic programmers who are unaccustomed to using static types at all and think it must be so super burdensome all the time" seems pretty accurate. Defining custom operators is not something that occupies even 1% of my time in any static language.
Another example is A is -9223372036854775807 and B is -10. Again you will get an incorrect result.
Once you finish fixing these bugs it will be at least 100 lines long. The dynamically typed version of the code is just A + B.
"a lot of this debate just ends up being dynamic programmers who are unaccustomed to using static types at all"
Static typing is objectively the inferior approach. It's just that people are too lazy to learn how to code with two different typing systems.
Overall statically typed programmers only code at 1/3 of the speed as their dynamically typed counterparts. Of course, if you have only ever done statically typed programming, you are not going to understand how bad it is in comparsion.
In fact JavaScript numbers aren’t magic, they are 64bit doubles, which have their own strange behavior and special cases, many of which could be considered “incorrect”. You’re acting like dynamic typing solves problems that it doesn’t solve.
JavaScript is terrible because it was built over 3 decades by different competing browser vendors.
It's a little bit simpler than anything you will get in an statically typed language. It works for integer and floats of any size. It even works for lists!
You can't do that in a statically typed language without a ton of code.
Oh, look. Something that statically typed languages solves.
If we're discussing weakly typed languages then this argument is more valid, but that opens up to a new class of bugs strong dynamically typed languages don't have.
Anyone who says the conclusion is obvious have probably not thought this through.
Dynamically typed languages are more powerful languages that can handle problems like this correctly.
Much too often, any discussion of typing systems often boils down to specific traits around someone's favourite language. These specifics are obviously important enough to warrant a lot of skepticism around too general conclusions from studies.
Bascially we're all recounting anecdotes, so let's be honest about that. I don't doubt yours, I just don't think they necessarily reflect fundamental truths about programming.
> 9223372036854775807 + 10 :: Integer
9223372036854775817
>>> numpy.int_(9223372036854775807) + 10
<stdin>:1: RuntimeWarning: overflow encountered in long_scalars
-9223372036854775799You're explicitly comparing apples and oranges here. Are you implying that it's never necessary to check for overflow and underflow in dynamically typed languages, and that it's somehow mandatory to do so in statically typed ones? Or, in case your argument is "numbers in dynamically typed languages do not overflow", are you aware of BigDecimal in Java or sys.maxint in Python 2?
Yes, running arbitrary code at compile-time can produce arbitrarily complicated results if you're not very very careful. This is not a type system issue: lisp macros are just as dangerous.
> abstract base classes
Again, nothing to do with types: your complaint is with Java-style OO. Which is garbage, but for historical Java-specific reasons. Using Java as your prototypical example of a typed language is like using PHP as your prototypical example of a dynamic language. There's no such thing as a feature good enough to rescue a bad language. That doesn't mean no feature of a bad language can ever be good.
> generics
Generics produce strictly simpler code than copy-pasting the same implementation over and over again. That's their entire purpose. A generic function isn't a way to give the same name to different pieces of code (the way that inheritance is, for instance), it's literally one function: `mapIntList` is `mapFloatList` is `mapStringList` is `mapIntListList`, all the way down to the compiler output. Unless you're doing some pretty serious performance optimization, giving them different implementations is a bug. And you wouldn't do so in a dynamic language either!
> non-trivial user defined types
These exist as part of your program structure whether you like them or not, the only question is whether they've been made explicit.
> Consider a simple program that adds 2 numbers: a & b together. In a dynamically typed language, this would be a + b. In a statically typed language, once you consider overflow and underflow, you will likely have a hundred lines of code.
Considering overflow and underflow in the static case but not the dynamic case is stacking the deck. Either you're using arbitrary-precision numbers or you're not.
Here's Haskell code for adding two numbers:
add :: Num x => x -> x -> x
add a b = a + b
You can complain that this isn't "really" the addition code, since we're calling out to the `Num` instance, but the same applies to dynamic languages. Python's `a + b` is calling out to `__add__` in exactly the same way.
> This creeps up again in JSON parsing where the types really are defined at runtime.
They are not. The type of arbitrary JSON is (using Haskell again)
data JSON =
| JSONNull
| JSONBool Bool
| JSONNumber Double
| JSONString Text
| JSONArray [JSON]
| JSONObject (HashMap Text JSON)
That just makes no sense. Both programs have the same underlying structure, but it's hidden in dynamic languages. Having no compiler and type system makes reasoning much more difficult, there is no discussion about that.
> The larger the program you write with static typing, the worse it becomes compared to it's dynamically typed counterpart.
Again, that's just not the case: try refactoring Python code without type hints in a large code base. It takes a lot more time and effort and you can never be sure you caught all the cases affected by changes. The compiler tells you about every change needed to be made to arrive at a working state.
>Both programs have the same underlying structure No they don't, this is just a massive gap in your knowledge.
> try refactoring Python code without type hints in a large code base
I've done that on multiple occasions, the test suite is fine, thank you very much.
That's simply not true.
> No they don't, this is just a massive gap in your knowledge.
Based on your responses here I don't think you really know what you are talking about.
> I've done that on multiple occasions, the test suite is fine, thank you very much.
Well, if you say so.