Comments on: Is Strong Typing really needed?

By: Alexandru Craciun

Alexandru Craciun — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 11:11:34 +0000

I totally agree with the list of benefits having a strongly typed language, even with the drawbacks you listed. With these advantages in mind we developed Strongly-typed Javascript (http://st-js.sourceforge.net) an open source Java to Javascript generator (much simpler than the similar GWT). Fortunately, part of the drawbacks you listed should disappear in Java 8.

And somehow related to the projects you’re involved, we were inspired by JsTestDriver to include a JUnit test runner that tests the generated Javascript by sending them to connected browsers and retrieving the results.

By: Eric Harrison

Eric Harrison — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:53:56 +0000

Great! This topic helps me to fully understand of what would be the benefits of the strong typing. Thanks for sharing.

By: Mmx

Mmx — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:00:13 +0000

Those you listed are not disadvantages of strong typing.

In C#, for example, you have closures, better generics and similar typing to javascript.

Like in:
taskRunner.execute(params, () => {response=”Success”});

About the verbosity. Verbosity is GREAT. The type name is too long ? Probably a sign you should refactor using a collection type instead of a Dictionary, List>>.

By: Afrijden

Afrijden — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:38:50 +0000

Nice! you show us benefits and disadvantages of strong typing! This really helped me.

thanks Shyam

By: Shyam

Shyam — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 22:03:18 +0000

Yes, Java is more verbose and requires more line of code. Reading is easier. BUt my point is that. Why do more lines of code when it can be done more cleanly and clearly in less. This is one of my biggest problems with Java / GWT. There are so many layers of marshalling code and so little of the actual business logic. Getting data from a DB and displaying it in the UI should be the easiest thing, and it is usually not the case

By: Dmitry Nikolaev

Dmitry Nikolaev — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:53:52 +0000

Generally, you want say that java is more verbose. Java required more lines of code. But I think this is what we may train. Our perception of code. It very (very) easy achieve, if you adopt your IDE setting for you (typography). This make reading of code more easier!

By: Misko Hevery

Misko Hevery — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:38:58 +0000

Glad you are coming around.

By: Philip Peitsch

Philip Peitsch — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:17:55 +0000

Not all those features are restricted to dynamic languages. C# implements Closures / Functions (lambda expressions and delegates are the terms used).

It sounds like a lot of your issues with static typing are with Java’s implementation… I’d definitely encourage you to look at some alternative statically typed languages if you can. I think that Java (though definitely a useful language), does a lot to make static typing painful. This is coming from someone who grew up on Java through Uni, then had to do a stack of development in C#. I still use both languages on a regular basis… but C# is definitely more “fun” to use due to some of the improvements made.

By: Graham Fawcett

Graham Fawcett — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:34:19 +0000

It’s “static typing” you’re talking about, not “strong typing”. You can have a dynamic, strongly-typed language. Python is one of many examples.

I’d avoid talking about ‘strong typing’ because it’s ambiguous — it means very different things to different people.

Regarding your subpoints: neither strong nor static typing prevents (or enables) the use of closures: that’s entirely orthogonal to types.

By: Shyam

Shyam — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:13:09 +0000

I have played around with Scala enough to say I think its a great improvement over Java in many cases. But I haven’t used it for long periods of time to have strong opinions about the things I like or don’t like. But I love the concepts of val vs var, where making things immutable is easy and almost like the default option. Mixins are awesome as well.