Re: Is strong typing worth the cost?

[jimmaureenrogers@worldnet.att.net (Jim Rogers)]

dmjones <derek@NOSPAMknosof.co.uk> wrote in message news:<Xns9200B524E1781derekknosofcouk@62.253.162.109>...
> Boys and girls,
> 
> > Seriously, any software that reports itself as safe and
> > correct must perform a significant amount of what the old
> 
> Who mentioned safe and correct?  This is avoiding the base
> issue.  Where is the evidence of a worthwhile cost/benefit
> for strong typing?
> 

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.

My point in my previous posting is that costs are a result of an overall
development process, as well as the requirements and restrictions of a
project. If you want to meet the requirements and restrictions of your
project you normally, in my experience, must produce the required behavior
from your software. Strong typing allows me to define code such that 
the compiler and default run time checks can detect erroneous data.
This saves me the time and the cost of trying to manually build in all
the same checks, or to define a test program to identify all the places
where such checks are needed.

This does not mean that I do not test my software. It does mean that I
do not have to test my software for how it handles out of range data.

To paraphrase a posting to comp.lang.ada many years ago, in my experience
C programmers are much more adept at using debuggers than are Ada 
programmers. The reduced need for debugging time is a cost savings.

When you are looking at cost, are you only looking at the execution speed
of a compiled program? Clearly a program with no type checking at all will
be much faster than one with type checking. It is also true that a 
program with no type or data checking will not be as safe as one with
type and data checking.

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.

Jim Rogers