Re: Is strong typing worth the cost?

[Darren New <dnew@san.rr.com>]

Jim Rogers wrote:
> You asked about cost. You did not specify the cost parameters you want to
> measure. My experience with software is that software is a total waste
> of exense UNLESS it is both safe and correct.

Not always true. There is plenty of software that if it works 90% of the
time it was worth the effort of writing it.  Even though people complain
mightily about all the bugs in MS software, it was still quite
profitable to MS to write it.
 
> This discussion may need to be reduced to a discussion of how to determine
> the cost of software. Many organizations have no answer to the question
> of how to determine the cost of software. Some people think software costs
> only include coding costs. Some people include coding and design costs.
> Some even add in maintenance costs. Other people see the primary cost
> of software being the damages caused by the software when it malfunctions.

Some see part of the cost of the software also to be the cost of running
it. Otherwise, nobody would ever *re*write a piece of code from a HLL to
assembler to make it more efficient. There's also the cost of
distribution to consider - how much effort does it take to (say) write
the scripts that install the software when it's done?

Anyway, I strongly suspect that anyone who thinks
  x : Integer range 0..5000;
as "strongly typed" and
  y : Integer;
as "not strongly typed" is not going to come up with much worthwhile in
terms of learning about the costs and benefits of different typing
systems.



-- 
Darren New 
San Diego, CA, USA (PST). Cryptokeys on demand.
   The 90/10 rule of toothpaste: the last 10% of 
         the tube lasts as long as the first 90%.