Comment by TeMPOraL
5 years ago
> Those same personas seem to have correlations in other ways: dynamic vs static typing, languages, monolith vs micro service.
Your theory needs to account for progression over time. For example, the first programming languages I've learned were C++ and Java, so I believed in static typing. Then I worked a lot in PHP, Erlang and Lisp, and became a dynamic typing proponent. Later on, with much more experience behind me, I became a static typing fan again - to the point that my Common Lisp code is thoroughly typed (to the point of being non-idiomatic), and I wish C++ type system was more expressive.
Curiously, at every point of this journey, I was really sure I have it all figured out, and the kind of typing I like is the best way to manage complexity.
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EDIT: your hypothesis about correlated "frames of mind" reminds me of a discussion I had with 'adnzzzzZ here, who also claimed something similar, but broader: https://github.com/a327ex/blog/issues/66 also touched on static/dynamic typing debate.
My programming path is similar to yours! Started with C++ then moved into Perl. Then realised that uber-dynamic-typing in Perl was a death-trap in enterprise software. Then oddly found satisfaction in Excel/VBA because you can write more strictly-typed code in VBA (there is also a dynamic side) and even safely call the Win32 API directly. Finally, I came back to C++ and Java which are "good enough" for expressing the static types that I need. The tooling and open-source ecosystem in Java makes it very hard to be more productive in other languages (except maybe C#, but they are in the same language family). I'm a role now that also has some Python. While the syntactical sugar is like written prose, the weaker typing (than C++/Java) is brutal in larger projects. Unless people are fastidious about type annotations, I constantly struggle to reason about the code while (second-)guessing about types.
You wrote: <<I wish C++ type system was more expressive.>> Can you share an idea? For example: Java 17 (due for release in the fall) will feature sealed classes. This looks very cool. For years, I (accidentally) simulated this behaviour using enums tied to instances or types.