Comment by phaedrus
1 day ago
I once attended a talk by someone who is or was big in the node.js world. He opened with the premise, "a static type check is just a stand-in for a unit test."
I wanted to throw a shoe at him. A static type check doesn't stand in for "a" unit test; static typing stands in for an unbounded number of unit tests.
Put another way, this common misconception by users of languages like Javascript and Python that unit testing is just as good as type checking (plus more flexible) is a confusion between the "exists" and "for all" logical operators.
Plus, it is simply more enjoyable to design the types in your program than to write unit tests. The fun factor comes from operating on a higher level of abstraction and engages more of your brain’s puzzle-solving mode than just writing unit tests. Making yourself think about “for all x” rather than a concrete x forces your brain to consider deeply the properties of x being used.
> it is simply more enjoyable to design the types in your program than to write unit tests.
I have tried both and I have no idea what you're talking about.
> Making yourself think about “for all x” rather than a concrete x forces your brain to consider deeply the properties of x being used.
The entire point of dynamic typing is that you can think about interfaces rather than concrete types, which entails deep consideration of the properties of the object (semantics of the provided interface).
That's not the entire point of dynamic typing, because all the interface stuff comes from statically typed languages. Some* dynamic languages borrowed it, but most use "implicit" interfaces - where the interface is whatever kind of works, I guess.
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> "a static type check is just a stand-in for a unit test."
This is not an original argument. Rich Hickey made a similar argument in his "Simple made easy" talk in 2011, though his focus was on a fact that every bug that easiest in a software system has passed unnoticed through both a type checker and a test suit. And even before that similar ideas of test suits being a suitable replacement for a type checker have percolated through Python and Ruby communities, too.
I distinctly remember that the "tests makes static type checks unnecessary" was in fact so prevalent in JavaScript community that TypeScript had really hard time getting adoption in its first 3-4 years, and only the introduction of VSCode in 2015 and subsequent growth of its marketshare over Atom and SublimeText got more people exposed to TypeScript and the benefits of a type checker. Overall it took almost 10 years for Typescript to become the "default" language for web projects.
> I wanted to throw a shoe at him.
You should have!
Agreed.
Besides, it's not like types don't matter in dynamically typed languages. The (competent) programmer still needs to keep types in their head while programming. "Can this function work with a float, or must I pass an int?" "This function expects an iterable, but what happens if I pass a string?" Etc.
I started my career with JavaScript and Python, but over the years I've come to the conclusion that a language that hides types from programmers and does implicit conversion magic in the background does not deliver a better DX. It might make the language more approachable initially, and the idea of faster prototyping might be appealing, but it very quickly leads to maintenance problems and bugs. Before type hinting tools for Python became popular, I worked on many projects where `TypeError` was the #1 exception in Sentry by a large margin.
Gradual and optional typing is better than nothing, but IME if the language doesn't require it, most programmers are lazy and will do the bare minimum to properly add type declarations. Especially with things like TypeScript, which makes many declarations difficult to read, write, and understand.
I think that type inference is a solid middle ground. Types are still statically declared, but the compiler is smart enough to not bother the developer when the type is obvious.
> Before type hinting tools for Python became popular, I worked on many projects where `TypeError` was the #1 exception in Sentry by a large margin.
My experience is radically different. `ValueError` is far more common in my un-annotated Python, and the most common cause of `TypeError` anyway is the wrong order or number of arguments after a refactoring.
Hhmm I could be misremembering if it was `ValueError` or `TypeError`. This was a few years ago. I know that typing issues were always the most frequent in any Python project I have worked on.
How is your experience different?
Hundreds of unit tests replace a type.
Start using properties and it is in the thousands.
Most code should be typed. Python is great for prototypes, but once the prototype gels, you need types.
I've always hated Python. Could never enjoy it at all. Pretty much the same poor DX as PHP, Javascript, Ruby, etc.
Finally set up neovim with pyright; use types on every single fucking thing, and now I love Python[1].
Can't wait to see TC39 become a reality (learned about it just this past week on HN, actually). Maybe I'll enjoy Javascript too.
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[1] Within reason; the packaging experience is still extremely poor!
Didn't get the bit about TC39 - it is just a group. It has nothing to do with types in JS.
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I've never seen types used correctly in Python. A `tuple` is not even a type! It's a type constructor!
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A unit test is a functional assertion. A type is a semantic construct that can provide that, but it provides a lot more.
As a trivial example, if I create a type alias from “string” to “foobarId,” I now (assuming a compliant language) can prevent code that consumes foobarIds from accidentally consuming a string.
Good that Python supports types then
Python has formalized magic comments.
You can run a third party linter on those comments, but you must hope that they're correct. There are usually some checks for that, but they're only reliable in trivial cases.
This is not static typing any more than "you can use emscripten to transpile JavaScript to C" means that JavaScript is a low level language with native assembly support. It's a huge step forward from "no system at all" and I'm thrilled it exists, but it's hardly the same thing.
It's actually remarkable how with the success of TypeScript so many other dynamic languages switched to gradual typing.
Erlang and Clojure were the early ones, TypeScript followed, and now Python, Ruby, and even Perl have ways to specify types and type check your programs.
> Good that Python supports types then
"Optional typing" is not the same as "Static typing".
Great, my program will crash, because I forgot to opt-in to typing :-/
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Poorly, though, and with lots of edge cases and foot guns to make you miserable once your code calls out to numpy or gets some JSON.
Tell me more please: how does one use types in Python? Unfortunately I write Python professionally these days (it is the language that has all the libraries) and hate it with a passion.
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If you care about the type of a parameter you can just add an assertion in the method /s
Good luck using static typing to model many real world unit tests for the programming languages people use most. I start with an easy example: those records should be sorted by date of birth. We can move on to more complicated scenarios.
> "records should be sorted by date of birth."
What's wrong with C#'s:
The comment didn’t claim that types are a stand in for tests either! IMO, they are orthogonal.
The comment explicitly set out to refute the idea "...that unit testing is just as good as type checking" by describing the former as simply inferior.
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No one claims that types are a stand in for all unit tests.
They stand in for the banal unit tests.
> A static type check doesn't stand in for "a" unit test; static typing stands in for an unbounded number of unit tests.
You have conflated "a static type check" with "static typing". Unit tests stand in, in the same way, for an unbounded number of states of real-world input. They're simply being subjected to a trial verification system rather than a proof system. It turns out that writing proofs is not very many people's idea of a good time, even in the programming world. And the concept of "type" that's normally grokked is anemic anyway.
> Put another way...
Rhetoric like this is unconvincing and frankly insulting. You pass off your taste and opinion as fact, while failing to understand opposed arguments.