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Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?"Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?"Posted Feb 5, 2013 23:59 UTC (Tue) by FranTaylor (guest, #80190)In reply to: Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?" by zlynx Parent article: Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?"
"dynamic languages make lazy programmers"
They also make programs that are easier to maintain by other developers because they are not overburdened with type information that is either redundant or irrelevant.
Have you ever worked in QA? Do you know where bugs come from? Many many bugs come from statically typed languages when square pegs are pushed into round holes by implied casts. You can say "experienced developers should not fall for this" but the simple fact is that even the most experienced developers create far more bugs per LOC in static languages than they do in dynamic ones.
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Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?" Posted Feb 6, 2013 0:50 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
> They also make programs that are easier to maintain by other developers because they are not overburdened with type information that is either redundant or irrelevant.
Modern languages have type inference.
> Have you ever worked in QA? Do you know where bugs come from? Many many bugs come from statically typed languages when square pegs are pushed into round holes by implied casts.
> You can say "experienced developers should not fall for this" but the simple fact is that even the most experienced developers create far more bugs per LOC in static languages than they do in dynamic ones.
Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?" Posted Feb 6, 2013 3:21 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
> They also make programs that are easier to maintain by other developers because they are not overburdened with type information that is either redundant or irrelevant.
I understand "redundant" but irrelevant? Care to give an example?
> Do you know where bugs come from? Many many bugs come from statically typed languages when square pegs are pushed into round holes by implied casts.
IME, at least I can get a static-typed language's compiler to warn me about cases. Python, PHP, JS, etc. just chug along merrily without a peep.
> You can say "experienced developers should not fall for this" but the simple fact is that even the most experienced developers create far more bugs per LOC in static languages than they do in dynamic ones.
I believe the research that I heard about[1] last found that bugs per LOC is about the same in every language[2]. It's just that "scripting" languages (which tend to be dynamic-typed) typically need fewer lines to do what they need.
[1]I'll try to find it.
Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?" Posted Feb 6, 2013 18:11 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
> I'll try to find it.
It seems that this[1] StackOverflow post is a place to launch from.
[1]http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2898571/basis-for-clai...
Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?" Posted Feb 6, 2013 21:17 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] They also make programs that are easier to maintain by other developers because they are not overburdened with type information that is either redundant or irrelevant. Care to offer an example of a sizable program which is 10+ years old, not maintained by the people who've written it 10 years ago and which is written in a dynamic language? There are many such programs in C and enough in Java, but I'm yet to see anything like this in a dynamic language. When people who designed stuff are moving from project programs in dynamic languages quickly turn to unmaintainable mess and are usually rewritten. This is direct opposite to "easier to maintain" in my book. Programs in statically typed languages are kept around for decades (Cobol jokes aside there are a lot of programs in statically typed languages which are still in use). Have you ever worked in QA? Do you know where bugs come from? Many many bugs come from statically typed languages when square pegs are pushed into round holes by implied casts. Have you ever worked with security teams? Do you know where bugs unnoticed by QA but actively exploited in the wild come from? Many many bugs come from dynamically typed languages (primarily JavaScript and PHP, of course) which "do the right thing" in hothouse QA testing but then break apart in the wild. If you want to create program which will frustrate QA but which which will work reliable once released - use statically typed languages, if you want to create program which easily passes QA but then guarantees lifelong job insurance because someone needs to plug security holes again and again - use dynamic languages.
Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?" Posted Feb 7, 2013 1:17 UTC (Thu) by dirtyepic (subscriber, #30178) [Link]
>Care to offer an example of a sizable program which is 10+ years old, not maintained by the people who've written it 10 years ago and which is written in a dynamic language?
Portage.
Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?" Posted Feb 7, 2013 6:10 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Portage is great example of the phenomenon described above: it had few serious instances of typical dynamic languages crises of "we don't understand what goes on here and don't know how to fix that" variety, large pieces of it were rewritten in not-really-backward-compatible-manner because noone knew what goes in some pieces of it... and it's still a PITA for a Gentoo developers because of all these problems.
Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?" Posted Feb 7, 2013 5:05 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
sysvinit :)
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