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Comment by davesims | Hacker News Reader

> Yeah, no shit. Stop drinking warm coke.

Fine, then don't claim something like "All cokes in all contexts at all temperatures are better than all pepsis in all contexts at all temperatures."

This is equivalent to what the study does with static vs. dynamic. Your argument, if you actually had a point, would be something along the lines of, "wait I'm talking about this boutique hand-crafted cola (Haskell) I get at Whole Foods, not that old Coke (Java), that's 20 years out of date!"

You're trying to retro-actively reduce the scope of a study you didn't write. The conclusions clearly use generic language that brings all static typed languages into a comparison with all dynamic languages. The false equivalence is not mine! It's the study's. If you want it differently, go write your own study that reduces the scope of the conclusions.

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I'm gonna have to disagree with you about the conclusion you're drawing. Yes, they are using the generic phrasing of "static typing" vs "dynamic typing", but this is because the study was intended to test the concept of static vs dynamic typing, not particular instances of it. However, seeing as we only have specific instances from which to test, it used the best one currently in widespread use. I don't see this as a problem, nor do I think the wording of their conclusion necessarily implies anything about all instances of static typing currently in use. Sure, it left that open as a possible interpretation for people looking for justification of a preconceived notion, but you can't really blame that on the authors.

> but this is because the study was intended to test the concept of static vs dynamic typing, not particular instances of it

Help me out here -- since the study confines itself to a handful of small Python programs translated to an idiosyncratic language like Haskell, how can the scope of the study possibly in any way qualify as a study on something so broad as "the concept of static vs. dynamic typing"?

Are you not confusing a better, more appropriate argument you'd make for the argument actually made in the paper?

EDIT: > Sure, it left that open as a possible interpretation for people looking for justification of a preconceived notion, but you can't really blame that on the authors.

Is that really an argument you want to make, that I can't blame an author for using broad and imprecise language that infers unwarranted conclusions in an academic paper?

>Help me out here -- since the study confines itself to a handful of small Python programs translated to an idiosyncratic language like Haskell, how can the scope of the study possibly in any way qualify as a study on something so broad as "the concept of static vs. dynamic typing"?

You raise a good objection here. Is it possible to draw conclusions about the class of type systems labelled "static typing" vs dynamic typing by using a small sample of programs? I think this is where the impedence mismatch is occurring. The author seems to take static typing to mean "what can be currently accomplished through static typing", and thus he was justified in using the strongest static type system in use to do the study. Taking it this way, then the study seems meaningful.

Taking the other meaning, the class of type systems labelled static typing, then you end up with a very large set of languages each with (perhaps) varying amounts of power. Doing a study with just one static language does seem inadequate. Although, depending on the class of errors caught, it may still be valid. As far as I've seen, Haskell doesn't catch new classes of errors that are impossible in other systems, it just makes it a lot easier to do so. So essentially Haskell has the same power as other common type systems. If this holds, then the study would still be valid. (Admittedly I know very little about Haskell so I could be completely wrong).

TLDR: I see what you're saying, and I do agree that there needs to be more said before his conclusion can be supported by the study.

But isn't it problematic that it compared real-world average unit tests with the best-available type system?

I don't think so -- anyone is free to choose to use the best-available type system. You can't just choose to write the best possible unit tests.

He could only compare one of the best possible environments for writing dynamically typed code and unit tests to one of the best possible environments for writing statically typed code.

>Fine, then don't claim something like "All cokes in all contexts at all temperatures are better than all pepsis in all contexts at all temperatures."

He didn't. He said "coke tasted better than pepsi". I've explained this to you several times already. You are the only one saying anything about "all the time in every context". You. Not the author, not his paper. You.

Get me, still waiting over here for a relevant quote from the paper. I've given mine. Where are yours?

> He said "coke tasted better than pepsi"

I think he actually said "coke tastes better than pepsi". That verb tense has very different implications.

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