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Re: OT: Static/dynamic typing

• To: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>
• Subject: Re: OT: Static/dynamic typing
• From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
• Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 14:58:45 -0700
• Cc: Bill de hÓra <dehora@e...>,xml-dev@l...
• References: <000101c1f609$4cf619e0$887ba8c0@mitchum> <3CD85EA2.5FE76668@p...>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.0rc1) Gecko/20020417

Paul Prescod wrote:

> When I am creating new code, dynamic type checking almost always allows
> me to be more productive than static type checking. As Jonathan says,
> when you are changing or refactoring code, static type checking can more
> often catch your mistakes. Since maintenance lasts longer than initial
> development this would seem like a clear win for static type-checking
> except that it can often bloat and complicate the code and thus provide
> more opportunities for bugs to creep in. 

Another issue (whose important depends on context) is performance. 
Compilers dealing with static types (whether or not they're safe) can do 
all sorts of pedal-to-the-metal tricks that are not available in a 
dynamically typed environment.  The performance gain is going to be 
strongly dependent on the kind of code you're writing, and the 
importance of the performance gain depends on your business goals.  But 
it's something you don't want to ignore ignore. -Tim

• References:
  • RE: XQuery types was Re: Yet another plea for XUpdate...
    • From: Bill de hÓra <dehora@e...>
  • OT: Static/dynamic typing
    • From: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>

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