>
> Dynamical languages are above all oriented toward practical programming 
> needs *in certain contexts*--in other contexts, static typing is more 
> practical.
>

Agreed -- which is why I find your speculation about "lightening up" with 
"more experience ... meeting the demands of practical coding" to be 
unsound.  For those of us whose "practical programming" context includes a 
high cost associated with most any runtime bug, greater embrace of static 
typing, not "lightening up", comes with more practical experience.  I can 
be happy using a dynamically typed language when the price to be paid for 
getting it wrong isn't as high; but all of my experience goes against 
"lightening up" in the demanding programming context where I work every day.
 

On Monday, December 23, 2013 10:04:52 AM UTC-8, Mars0i wrote:
>
> I came to this thread late, and have only skimmed some of the answers, but 
> I think that the following, somewhat oblique, opinion hasn't yet been 
> expressed about the, I don't know, maybe ... harassment by "type weenies" 
> that zcaudate feels.  Apologies in advance if I've missed a similar point.
>
> First, I'll note that I agree with many of the comments so far.  To 
> everything there's a season.  That goes for type systems.
>
> In what I say next, I'm not trying to offend anyone.  I'm expressing 
> half-baked opinions about what I feel are general tendencies.  I am certain 
> that there are exceptions to *every* generalization I make.
>
> My personal opinion: 
>
> Many of us who like programming like it partly because we like order, 
> systematicity, and elegance, at least in our thinking.  We like things to 
> make sense.  Some people have a greater need for this than others, at least 
> at certain stages of their life.  So things that seem more clean and neat 
> are attractive.   Full-fledged static typing has this character.  It's 
> appealing because it's orderly in a very, well, strict sense.  I think it's 
> probably easier to be religious about static typing and provable 
> correctness as a universal goal if you don't have to deal with a lot of 
> pragmatic concerns.  So I suspect that many type zealots are students or 
> were recently, and that they'll end up lightening up in several years, 
> after they've got more experience with meeting the demands of practical 
> coding.  (That's not to imply they'll necessarily give up affection for 
> static typing, but it's hard to be a zealot after you've freely chosen, 
> many times, to compromise on formerly rigid principles.)  Dynamical 
> languages are above all oriented toward practical programming needs *in 
> certain contexts*--in other contexts, static typing is more practical.  
> Maybe some of the hard core static type advocates will see the potential 
> benefits dynamic typing when they get more experience.  But you can't 
> *prove*, mathematically, that dynamical typing is better sometimes.  Its 
> advantage comes out in actual *practice* in real-world situations.  
> ("Real world" doesn't mean business.  I'm an academic coding solely for 
> research purposes (and fun!).)
>
> My 2c.
>
>

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