On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 7:19 AM, Sean Wolfe <ether....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well working in java continues to suck. I wish I had more experience
> in C/cpp, working on it, because then I could be a little less biased
> on evaluating java. I mean my frustrations with curly brace completion
> and strong typing aren't a limitation of java per se.
>
> I've been reading a lot about the relative merits of static vs duck
> typing and a plus on the strongly-typed side seems to be, catching
> bugs in the editor or at compile time as opposed to runtime.
Yes. That's a primary benefit of statically typed languages--the compiler
can do some of the brain work for you. There are plenty of other examples,
too (e.g., const-correctness in C/C++ and the "throws" declaration in Java).
> From my
> deeply uneducated standpoint it seems to me like this wouldn't be a
> horribly hard thing to do, to add static typing or enforced types to
> python.
>From a programmer's perspective, I *don't* see it as easy to add support
for static typing to Python. It really must be all there or all *not*.
And having it *not* is one of the beauties of Python. It also made it
slower. However, it's a tradeoff the language designer(s) always have to
make; it can't really happen at the coders' level.
I suppose you could do things like:
def my_func(in):
if type(in) != type(""): raise ValueError()
. . . which emulate static types, but is still not a compile-time error.
In my early Python libraries, I found I was doing something of this sort
because I wanted it to be robust, even at the cost of performance (this is
a case where C++ wins: C++ is plenty fast, you don't have to do this
particular kind of error checking, and you can put #ifdef/#endif around
error-checking sections so that the code isn't even *there* when you don't
want it).
On the flip side, it's actually surprisingly easy to add duck typing (of a
sort, through polymorphism) to compile-time languages. In Java, simply
make everything type "Object". E.g.:
Object my_var = new String("Help! Spiders!");
my_var = new Integer(6);
I mean we could make cholices as we code as to what to use.
> When it was better to use a strongly typed methodolgy we could
> refactor our code. We could use the feature as needed, and continue
> with duck typing for normal python ness.
>
> Also, although coding in Java sucks massively and gives me no joy or
> happiness in life, I am finding a glimmer of hope and encouragement
> using this libgdx gaming framework which at least is made by game
> enthusiasts and uses cool terminology like 'Actor' and 'Stage' as
> opposed to Canvas and BitmapDrawable or worse ... java.util.List .
> Lord save me from java.util.List .
>
> Just a little rant to start of 2012 in the right way.
>
> Happy new year!! And remember. press on, it's only a flesh wound!
Ian
