On Fri, 06 Jun 2014 01:54:32 +0200, Sturla Molden wrote: > When is static analysis actually needed and for what purpose? The > problem seems to be that managers, team leaders, CEOs, or (insert your > favorite tite), are not qualified to answer this question. So to be on > the safe side they go for as much static analysis as possible.
Replace "as much as possible" with "the bare minimum provided by the compiler", and you will be usually right :-) Managers rarely choose languages like Haskell or Ada(?) where programs can be provably shown to be correct. They choose languages with just enough compile-time type checking to get in the way of rapid development, but not enough to lead to actual correct code. Some want languages like C that offer type-checking, but not languages like Pascal and its derivatives which enforce that type-checking -- Pascal is a "bondage and discipline" language, while C lets you escape from the discipline of types with the freedom of casts and other dangerous weak-typing features. -- Steven D'Aprano http://import-that.dreamwidth.org/ -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
