Re: Is strong typing worth the cost?

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@bpr.best.vwh.net>]

On Fri, 3 May 2002, Ed Falis wrote:
> Randy Brukardt wrote:
> > I'll grant you that existing Ada environments are poorly suited to XP.
> > It's unclear if the language really is, or if it is simply a deficiency
> > of the current environments.
>
> I don't buy either argument.  While I haven't done full-up XP, I've
> certainly done test-first development a la XP quite effectively, using
> AUnit and the capability in Glide for generating its boilerplate code.
> I also approximate DbC using pragma Assert.  It works well, and is
> within the spirit of XP.  GNAT is quite fast enough for test-first
> flavored development, as you tend not to have a lot of context in unit
> tests.

I agree with all that. I don't think the X in XP is so extreme that the
verbosity of Ada causes your keys to get hot because of all the extra
pounding. And GNAT is a very quick, and has excellent error reporting
facilities.

> Admittedly, refactoring would be easier without manifest typing, but
> that's a tradeoff, and tool support is possible.

Excellent observation, and well phrased too. Note that Ed says *manifest*
typing. It's certainly possible to have languages with strong, static
(static = compile time) typing that do some type inference, and this can
reduce the refactoring burden. One of the few things I like a lot better
in C++ than in Ada is that C++ templates get some implicit instantiation.
I'd love it if there was an Ada variant with some kind of implicit
instantiation.

-- Brian