Re: Is strong typing worth the cost?

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

There does tend to be a "Put the burden of proof on Ada" kind of attitude
that often comes into play. It may not be entirely unfair in that someone
can say "This is what I do now. You propose that I do something different
and claim it is better. Can you demonstrate how this is better?"

OTOH, there actually *is* some half-way scientific evidence that Ada *does*
do things better when taken overall. (Its difficult to isolate just one
feature of Ada and say "Demonstrate that just this feature is better." We do
have studies that tend to indicate that The Ada Way, taken as a whole,
results in higher productivity and lower defects.) There is no scientific
evidence I am aware of that somehow weak typing, lack of runtime checks,
"concise" syntax or other features that are contrary to the Ada philosophy
(The AntiAda Way?) improve productivity or reduce defects over development
in Ada or other more rigorous languages.

So we might say, "There is no rigorous, *scientific* proof of the
superiority of either strategy. Do we have any unscientific evidence or
logical reasoning or anectdotal evidence or other factors to prefer the
strong typing model of Ada?" I think there is quite a bit of that sort of
thing to demonstrate that for non-trivial applications, you get better
results with Ada's philosophy than with other philosophies. (With the
standard disclaimer: "All Other Things Being Equal" :-) Now the ball can go
over to the other court: Can this be demonstrated with science to be false?

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


<tmoran@acm.org> wrote in message
news:9gBz8.4054$%r1.2380315867@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com...
> > Where is the evidence of a worthwhile cost/benefit
> > for strong typing?
>   Let's rephrase that: Where is the evidence that strong typing
> is not worth the cost?  As a matter of fact, what does it cost?
> I suggest the cost is zero, in which case even the most minor of
> benefits would make the benefit/cost = infinity.
>