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@SevenDeadlyBugs TypeScript has a kinda cool type system (string literals as types?) but Python just sucks. I don't see anything good about it. Not having atleast type annotations is inexcusable but they alone don't help much. Especially if absolutely no one (including the god awful Python standard library) is using them
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@irene I use them everywhere. Nobody else does though
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@irene You can't use them for everything, though. Local variables declared in a for loop can't be hinted. Fields are also hard to hint (my ide doesn't care about them)
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@irene type hinting doesn't necesarily a static typing i guess. Perhaps mypy would be a better alternatives
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@wowotek Not using Python would be the alternative :)
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@12bitfloat yes and also that would be a great choice to pick
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@irene Well, yes. But you can't type it out, so you always have to check the type hint of the list you're iterating over
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@irene True. And that's perfectly reasonable (because it's essentially just like type inference for local variables). I just want to have strongly typed with optional inferred instead of dynamically typed with optional hints. Especially function signatures and fields should be strongly typed
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@irene Statically I mean
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If that would be anywhere near standard the documentation part of that would be fine (please note how this is a straight rip of javadoc comments :) ). But we have docstrings -- oh yeah, and you can't even document variables with docstrings. And this isn't even static typing anyways. The type of variable is THE most important property it has (right before the name) imo so why put it somewhere in a magic tag in a comment
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@irene If you are declaring a variable, you wan't to store some value. If you have a value to store you know what the value is supposed to be. If you know what it's supposed to be, you know it's type. Dynamic/weak typing makes no sense in my opinion
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@irene Just because a variable is technically just a label doesn't mean we don't need strong types in practice. We do. 100% coverage tests are stupid
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@irene Interfaces are still types, though. And interfaces fit *perfectly* into static typing. Foo&Bar intersection types also exist in some languages
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@irene I'm taking about static typing; the act of enforcing types of values stored in variables.
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@irene Depends on your definition. For me they're types because I think statically typed
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@irene Also name one advantage of dynamic typing over static typing with type inference
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@irene Reducing verbosity is only good until you remove vital information from screen so you have to constantly remember it. "Several slightly different" implementations isn't due to static typing more because of inheritance instead of composition. And it might sound funny but it makes sense. If the types do the same thing but aren't logically related there's no reason they should share code. That makes it impossible to refactor properly. It also doesn't happen very often and if the are logically related you can either use inheritance or composition, why not.
The template problem is very much a C++ problem. It also solves things Python can't do: Compile-time logic (Not that that's needed in a scripting language). Normal problems with verbose generic parameters can easily be solved with generic inference. I don't understand what you mean with "interface problem" though -
@irene Is that really a problem? I've been programming Java for quite a few years and I've never seen more than a handful of interfaces implemented in a single class. Even if that is the case in some codebases. I'd still rather type out all the interfaces in the class definition once and have it black on white than having to remember/imply that they should be implemented.
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@irene Sure. I guess I personally just don't see the advantages of dynamic typing that would justify the disadvantages IMO
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@irene Funnily enough it actually doesn't bother me too much
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@irene My scripting language will be terse comparable to python though
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@irene Opposite of verbose. It'll look a bit like python
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@Yamakuzure Templates are great but only because we don't have anything better. They're *way* to verbose and restrictive compared to functional code which is essentially what they are
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@12bitfloat What could be better?
You can unify code for similar types and add specialization for types that need it.
You can even make a template inherit from its own specislization. Makes storage constructs easy to write and powerful as hell.
Well, I guess we have different experience on that matter... 🤔 -
@Yamakuzure Static typing 😉
Documentation is great to establish a high level contract. But you need proper typing to ensure correctness (atleast to some degree) -
@SoulSkrix C# is no different in regard to types to Java, except type inference via 'var' (which Java now also has), which is exactly the type of type inference I'm advocating for.
Again, if you like Python that's fine. I personally just don't understand how one can effectively use such a loose type system -
@12bitfloat erm... Templates *are* statically typed.
I guess, being a Java guy, you do not have that much experience with C++ templates, do you?
When you invoke a templated function, the compiler generates a variant with the types you use for the invocation. The same happens with templated structs and classes.
In a non-templated language like C, you would have to Copy, Paste & edit for each type you use.
And in C the function parameters are not a part of the function signature, so you have to name each copy individually.
The strength of templating versus being typeless is, that it happens at compile time, not runtime. -
If you knew what you were doing within the language, you wouldn’t be complaining right now.
We all have our preferences, and that’s completely fine. But just because you can’t comprehend how to utilize a language properly, doesn’t make it a bad language.
Stick to your preferred languages, and then we won’t have to deal with rants like this. -
@Froot Why? Tools are there to help us and we all have our preferred ones. In my daily work, I am not paid to do coding exercises, I am paid to accomplish tasks. I my employer told me that autocomplete was for weaklings and they will henceforth only allow coding to be done in notepad, I would quit. Because my employer would be an idiot.
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@irene thanks, you are right, I confused the two terms. Sorry! 💐
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@monkeyboy Agreed but it's a slippery slope from "this helps me to code faster and better" to "I don't really know of much it works, my IDE just makes it work for me"
It's the latter that I hate -
@Froot if you don't know what you are doing, no IDE in this universe can magically make you productive.
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@nitwhiz I've never said templates aren't statically typed. That's what this thread is mainly about. I've your gonna hate me at least hate me for the right reasons
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@nitwhiz I've dynamic typing is great then please actually respond to any of my points of criticism
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@Yamakuzure Oh but that's the problem, you can. I've ran into countless examples of devs writing complete spaghetti and relying on eslint --fix to clean it up for example. While ESlint is not an IDE is illustrates the point
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@Froot sure it does...
... I'd just wouldn't call that "productive" in a sense of "ending up with something feasible"... 🤔 -
@Froot if you wanna format your code by hand go ahead.
I prefer to let the computer do the dumb stuff for me ;)
I know what you mean and Ive met people like that but formatting isnt a great example tbh. -
@musician I think it's a great example because if you format it by hand you get used to it and start writing that way, you learn. At first the linter is a cruch, bit you grow out of it. If you continue to write spaghetti and let the linter clean it up for you you'll always write spaghetti.
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@Froot so what? Noone will care how I write my code as long as it looks good after I commit it. For me its faster to write spaghetti and let the computer do the formatting for me. I could format it by hand but why waste my time? I dont learn anything doing it.
We have tools for a reason. Otherwise go back to writing code without syntax highlighting (since thats a crutch as well ;)) -
@musician That's where you're wrong. It's no faster if you're good at formating. I write code with little linting errors naturally at this point, and I'm no slower than I would be if I wrote spaghetti. If anything, I'm faster, because what I write reflects the outcome almost perfectly so I don't have to go over it again
Edit: I assume you double check the changes your editor makes right?
Edit: about the efficiency. Engineers don't get paid per line, at least good ones dont.
If anything, the lines of code you write is inversely proportional to what you make. Less is more. -
@Froot of course they dont get paid by loc's. Did I say that anywhere?
To each his own. If you prefer to work like that its fine but stop assuming everyone who doesn't is a worse programmer because of it.
Also its mostly little things like inserting semicolons / trailing commas and the correct quotes according to the coding standards that the linter auto fixes. If you prefer to do that by hand good for you. I certainly dont. Programming is taxing enough mentally. The less I need to worry about mundane things like that the more I can think about the important stuff. -
@Froot @musician
A good editor auto-indents. However, some do not auto-format everything according to my style guide.
Visual Studio is such an example.
The code I write is already well formatted, as I do this already and have the help of the IDE.
But before I can commit, I have to run astyle over it to fix all the tiny things where VS thought it knew better than me, and those, where I slacked. -
@musician @Yamakuzure I guess we'll never convince each other here 😀
I still think writing code and then letting the editor fix it for you is perverse 😀
PS: I might not have worded my point very well. I think autocompletions and the like is fine, I use that obviously. My point is that I want to know exactly what I write and thus autoformating my completed code is a no no for me -
@Froot just to make this clear: none of my tools *fixes* code. The only one who fixes mistakes is me, after the compiler had its say.
I guess I misunderstood you there. I thought of formatting tools like astyle or uncrustify. Not something that adds missing semicolons and stuff like that.
Related Rants
This never gets old...
Exactly
Dynamically typed languages suck. God I hate them
It's like one big clunky free for all. I don't understand how people can work in Python or even JavaScript and tell me that they're good languages with a straight face
Not having proper autocomplete or documentation (a somewhat seperate issue of Python) is a kick in the stomach for productivity.
I've seen people advocate for using EXTERNAL DOCUMENTATION VIEWERS. WHAT
I hate not being able to enforce types so I can reason about little parts of my program. I hate not having an IDE that can actually help me. I hate having to see stupid grep'ed code snippets instead of nicely formatted javadocs. I hate having to double and triple check everything when trying to code. I hate handling effectively opaque values where I don't know anything about the type without looking it up. And I especially hate not knowing what types function parameters need to be.
Dynamic typing doesn't remove types. That, although completely unfeasible, I could respect.
Oh no, the types are still there. Just not for you
It's like solving a jigsaw puzzle with a blindfold on
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