Re: Is strong typing worth the cost?

[dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison)]

dmjones <derek@NOSPAMknosof.co.uk> wrote in message news:<Xns91FEB85DCA09Cderekknosofcouk@62.253.162.108>...

> I have been trying to locate evidence that the cost of the use
> of strong typing is repaid by a greater benefit.

There was a study done on compiler software by Rational. It showed
something like 2x productivity for Ada over C, with the credit being
laid at least partially on Ada's strong typing. It should be available
somewhere on their website, but you'll probably have to search for it.

There are other differences in the languages than just the strength of
the typing though (eg: no "=" vs "==" confusion, more English-like
syntax, etc), so it isn't as clean a study as you'd want if you are
just looking at type checking. But it would be tough to find better
from an Ada newsgroup, as there aren't non-type-checking versions of
Ada floating around.

A better idea might be to try to find out if anyone ever did such a
study with C projects with and without Lint.


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