Re: Static typing question

Thank you very much Jochen for the answer. I agree that Typescript can be
misused, but do you prefer a 10K LOC in Javascript or Typescript?
What is more maintainable given best practices are respected in each
language? Personally I would get up to speed faster in Typescript even If
the developer was not 100% conforming to types.

I see your point that  @compilestatic groovy vs "free range" groovy
resembles the typescript vs javascript situation, still I do not find it
ideal to have 2 languages in terms of maintenance effort.

But I am not here to argue. Just wanted to ask and learn from the answers.

Vasilis

On Sun, Dec 31, 2023 at 4:38 PM Jochen Theodorou <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 31.12.23 05:20, Agile Developer wrote:
> > Hi, Edmond
> >
> > can you give me a case not covered by a typed language? I'm  really
> > curious, because the more I think the more I see modern PL
> > practice/research has uncovered typed language strengths. These days,
> > typed languages solve more and more issues traditionally solved with
> > dynamic languages.
>
> I find the question strange to be frank. I know of no problem that
> requires a specific quality of the programming language to solve it
> (Touring complete?). Being that strongly or weakly typed, being that
> static or dynamic typed, being everything a logic clause or a list, ...
>
> I think this can be seen on my situation of typescript vs. javascript.
> Here typescript is really only an extension to javascript. Basically all
> constructs it adds are there for the type system. Typescript has a very
> practical type system where types do not have to be of the same name to
> be equal. And what typescript will produce at the end is just
> javascript. It does not make the code faster, it does not make solving
> problems more easy. In fact you can produce some very wild types in
> typescript, that will require another programmer to look up a lot of the
> specialties of the type system to understand them. So is Typescript of
> no use? No, it does help when refactoring larger code bases. Did I ever
> have to refactor a larger code base in typescript? Never - well once, it
> was not that big and it was really really difficult. You tend to use so
> many libraries that normally your code base really does not grow to that
> level. It does help avoiding the small mistakes any basic tests would
> uncover as well. So yeah... for me personally I have very little gain
> from typescript and it slows me down writing my code if I have to write
> a web-app. And still I have to write 90% of this code in typescript,
> because I work in a team and other people will later have to maintain
> this code. People I work with feel safer by using types.
>
> And in the end it is what counts most to the average programmer: the
> promise of safety.
>
> Did I ever have to refactor large Java code bases and it was a big pain?
> Oh yes - many times. Just because you have types does not prevent people
> from writing awfully unreadable code, misuse concepts, diverge from
> initial intentions, introduce no concepts half heartedly, plain ignore
> everything that has been done before, misunderstandings, ...
>
> It really boils down to 3 aspects here for me:
> (1) how long does an average programmer need to solve the problem
> (including libraries).
> (2) how long does it take an average programmer to produce an error free
> program.
> (3) how easily can another average programmer change the program.
>
>
> bye Jochen
>


-- 
Dr. Vasileios Anagnostopoulos (MSc,PhD)
Researcher/Developer