Re: Is strong typing worth the cost?

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

Interesting questions. If I write an Ada program using just the types
defined in Standard, I've still got stronger typing than writing a C program
with the types int and char and double, etc... It doesn't cost any more to
use Integer and Character and Long_Float, etc... in terms of any relavent
development time, yet you automatically get *some* level of type safety. If
it causes a single error to be found at compile time that would have snuck
through an equivalent C program that needed to be found with a debugger, one
could argue that the fix is inherently less costly since it is found earlier
in the process. To argue that this *adds* any cost you'd have to convince
yourself that including appropriate conversions and fixing compiler error
messages takes some significant amount of time in comparison to having the
compiler let everything slide on through. That, while undemonstrated, seems
to be highly unlikely.

Its not an easy thing to demonstrate with experiments, in any case. There
are just too many variables. It might be easier to demonstrate something at
a more encompassing level, like "Language X is more productive than Language
Y" since there you can easily swap out the variable. But you're still stuck
with trying to make all other things be equal.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Chad R. Meiners" <crmeiners@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:aamiqj$30ce$1@msunews.cl.msu.edu...
>
> If you want to write the SAME programs (one with and one without strong
> typing), you will have to analyze the constraints that you wish to place
on
> variables in both programs.  The cost of using a strong type system is the
> creation of types that satisfy your constraints; the cost of not using a
> strong type system is writing the code so that it audits itself with
> constraint checks every time it modifies the variables.  Note that if you
do
> not wish to place constraints on any variables the strong typing system
does
> not cost more than the weak typing system since you do not have to create
> any types.  One can easily construct examples where the strong typing
> systems costs less.  Can you construct an example where it costs more?
>
> If you want to write DIFFERENT programs (one with strong typing the others
> without), how can you compare the costs of strong typing against the cost
of
> weak typing?
>
> -CRM
>
>