Comments on: Is Strong Typing really needed?

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.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:08:16 +0000

What are your thoughts on something in between like scala where its strongly typed but the verbosity is similar to that of a dynamic language.