In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Donn Cave <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >I can only believe that if you think the benefit of static typing is >psychological, either something is very different between the way you >and I write programs, or you're not doing it right. > >For me, the effect is striking. I pound out a little program, couple >hundred lines maybe, and think "hm, guess that's it" and save it to >disk. Run the compiler, it says "no, that's not it - look at line 49, >where this expression has type string but context requires list string." >OK, fix that, iterate. Most of this goes about as fast as I can edit, >sometimes longer, but it's always about structural flaws in my program, >that got there usually because I changed my mind about something in >midstream, or maybe I just mistyped something or forgot what I was doing. >Then, when the compiler is happy -- the program works. Not always, but >so much more often than when I write them in Python.
That's just not true for me. Take my recent Java experience (please!). I spent much effort trying to resolve stupid type dependencies that made no sense. Python's duck-typing just works -- if it looks like you should be able to use an object for a particular operation, you probably can. Python programs that I write mostly just work; instead of pounding out two hundred lines of code straight, I keep adding stubs and filling them in, testing operation as I go. This isn't even unit-testing -- I haven't drunk that Kool-Aid yet. This is easy because running a Python program is faster than invoking the Java compiler -- and you still haven't tested the actual operation of your Java program. -- Aahz ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "19. A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing." --Alan Perlis -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
