Re: Is strong typing worth the cost?

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

Wes Groleau wrote:
> 
> > long as the end result looks good, it doesn't matter what the code looks
> > like. It could be the most god-awful mess of spaghetti code and misnamed
> > uncommented variables you can imagine, and it just doesn't matter. As
> > soon as the film is out, you're never going to run the program again.
> 
> That may be true if it's really "run-once" software.

Well, considering that the matte paintings in the second half of Star
Wars were painted on the same scraped-clean glass that the matte
painting in the first half were painted on, yah, I'd say it's likely
run-once.

> But what if you want something you can use again,
> something more general purpose.  So that you can
> spend a hundred thousand adapting it instead of
> a million starting over.

Here you're making the assumption that the people selling the movie have
a non-zero interest in selling the software as well. I don't think it
works that way. Half the time they can't even find intact versions of
the movies themselves 10 years later, let alone the software used to
create them.

Now, maybe Pixar comes along and adds the routines to Renderman or
something, but in that case, I think Pixar would generally wind up
rewriting it from scratch anyway. The hard part is getting the
algorithms and parameters right, not implementing them correctly given
you know what they're supposed to do.

> And what if it costs two million to get it working
> when if it were readable and/or less buggy, it would have
> cost one million?

Then you just spent a million more than you thought you would. Or,
rather, you spent 2 million on software to save 20 million worth of
artists' time, rather than spending 1 million to save 20 million. 

I'm not saying strong typing is bad. I'm just saying it's not obvious
that it's always a win, because not all programming has the same
reliability requirements as the kind of "niche" ;-) that Ada works well
in.
 
> Back to the original question, eh?

Well, the original question is "is strong typing good?" I'm just trying
to point out that it's not really a yes/no question, and the right
question to ask is "is strong typing good for me?" And then you get to
define the appropriate meaning for "strong typing". Clearly, if your
programming environment is based on something like Extreme Programming,
then strong typing (as the OP seems to define it) is *not* going to be
beneficial and will probably slow you down at least to half speed if not
more.

-- 
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%.