Re: Is strong typing worth the cost?

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

Part of the problem here is that it is not at all clear or obvious that XP
is any good for anything at all. Does XP result in faster time to market
than some other development process? Maybe. Maybe not. It is not proven
AFAIK that following an XP process is going to get you to market sooner.
Does it result in more reliable software? Unclear. Does it result in lower
overall costs for software? Similarly unclear. It may be well suited to some
domains and not to others. Its a development strategy that might have some
intellectually satisfying characteristics, but (like strong typing in
isolation) it isn't proven to be "The Answer" for any or all development
problems. It also is not demonstrated that you can't modify or abandon any
individual elements of an XP methodology without destroying any of the
benefits it might yield.

From what I've read of XP it seems to be kind of a "religion" that might be
really appealing to the "Hacker Mentality" since it deliberately avoids lots
of formal stuff that seems to chafe at the free spirits out there. But since
XP is really a development process (kind of a variation on the "spiral
model" theme) - then like any other process, I don't see why it can't be
adapted to suit the demands of an organization. (Unless, of course, one
accepts every pronouncement of XP as an article of faith that cannot be
denied without commiting an act of heresy. :-) So likewise, I don't see why
XP cannot be adapted to programming in Ada, presuming that there is any
food-value to be had by doing so to begin with. For example, if some aspect
of XP is easy to do with pointers to functions but it is considered some
kind of apostasy to use subprogram stubs, then commit the apostasy and use
subprogram stubs. (You can usually generate them automatically - or at least
pretty quickly). I don't think its at all obvious that this would "destroy"
XP or mean that if XP has some benefit that the benefit is lost.

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:aaturp$10tn$1@msunews.cl.msu.edu...
> You  failed to show how strong typing must slow you down in XP.  You can
> always elect not to define a type or you could define an object type that
> you derive all of your types from.  You showed how you could slow yourself
> down intentionally by using strong typing, but you clearly failed to show
> how strong typing in and of itself slows you down in XP.
>