On Sat, 01 Sep 2012 21:21:50 -0400, Nick Sabalausky
<seewebsitetocontac...@semitwist.com> wrote:
On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 09:35:31 -0400
"Steven Schveighoffer" <schvei...@yahoo.com> wrote:
For example, I use netbeans to write php -- a dynamic language.
There are no real variable type declarations, so when you start
typing, auto-complete sucks unless you have told the IDE what a
variable is. You do so like this:
/**
@var Type
*/
var $varname;
And now the IDE assumes you have stored a Type into $varname, so when
you type $this->varname->, it completes with the members of Type.
Wow, so it's basically reinventing static typing poorly. You've got
the boilerplate and verbosity of a poorly-made static type system, with
very few of the benefits (ie, IDE-awareness and nothing else).
I'll never understand the dynamic world.
I have on occasion had the benefit of simply adding a member variable to
instances of a class when I needed it without having to burden the rest of
the code with knowing about that variable. I felt dirty doing it...
But I think you are right -- "fake" static typing does not come close to
actual static typing. If I could count all the time I've wasted because I
mistyped a member variable name, and it "just worked", blissfully reading
null instead of the variable I've set, it would probably add up to days.
Thankfully, netbeans 7 is better at telling me that a variable is
previously unset or is never used, but it can't be perfect, especially
with this mess I inherited. The original author thought "modularity"
meant importing large pieces of functions from other files, which the IDE
refuses to correctly interpret.
This, of course, all comes from two guys who really like static typing :)
We *may* have a biased view.
In any case, it is what it is -- the existing code-base is huge, and I
have no real desire to rewrite all of it :) The best I can do is add some
typing comments and hobble through it (cursing as I go). If I had a year
of spare time, I could rewrite it all in D!
-Steve
