Re: Is strong typing worth the cost?

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

Marin David Condic wrote:
> 
> Maybe. Maybe not. I have not made a thorough study of it, but have read some
> descriptions of it. But as for "Waterfall" - I don't think anybody ever
> actually did anything of significance in a pure "Waterfall" method - even if
> they say they did. Almost any project of size has to deal with changes
> midstream that require going back to revisit requirements or design or other
> things along the way - thus really creating a kind of spiral model. Most of
> the projects I've been on have involved iterative builds of some sort - how
> fast and when are always an issue.

Sure. But by "waterfall" I mean the development model where first you
talk to the customers and get all the requirements, then you plan how
you're going to structure the code, then .....

In XP, if you can't implement it this week, it's not a requirement. You
don't even consider it. It's off the scope.

> Keep in mind that a lot of technologies have come out where adherents start
> to think they have found a panacea - including Ada. Usually, you gain
> something and give something else up along the way.

Yep. I think there are a lot of situations where XP is not effective.
Pair Programming is going to be very difficult if you don't have
everyone in the same office. If you don't have a customer there to tell
you the next set of requirements every day/week and to answer questions,
it's likely not to work well. If the project is big enough that you need
more than about a dozen programmers, I don't think it would work well.
If it's a system where a language like Smalltalk isn't reasonable (say,
embedded or real-time systems) it's not going to work. If it's a system
where you aren't developing on the same class of machines that you're
deploying on, it's not going to work well. I'm told that it works well
for things like libraries and components for general distribution, but I
don't really believe that, due to the customer not being there. Etc.

I don't think it's a panacea at all. Perhaps some of the proponents do.
Again, I only brought it up as an example of a situation in which strong
typing *might* be more of a cost than a benefit.

-- 
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%.