Type annotations don’t double productivity. What does “increase safety by 2×” even mean? What metric are you tracking there?
In my experience, the main non-documentation benefit of type annotations is warning where the code is assuming a value where None might be present. Mixing up any other kind of types is an extremely rare scenario, but NoneType gets everywhere if you let it.
Obviously this post is still firmly in made up statistics land, but i agree with OP, in some cases they absolutely do.
New code written by yourself? No, probably not. But refactoring a hairy old enterprise codebase? Absolutely a 2×, 3× multiplier to productivity / time-to-correctness there.
My own anecdotal metric. Isn't that obvious? The initial post was an anecdotal opinion as well. I don't see a problem here.
>In my experience, the main non-documentation benefit of type annotations is warning where the code is assuming a value where None might be present. Mixing up any other kind of types is an extremely rare scenario, but NoneType gets everywhere if you let it.
It's not just None. Imagine some highly complex object with nested values and you have some function like this:
def modify_direction(direction_object) -> ...
def modify_data(data) -> ...
...
modify_direction(data.quat)
def combind_data(quat) -> ...
def create_quat() -> quat
Absolutely insane. If I have a type, I can just look at the type to figure everything out... you can see how much faster it is.
Oh and get this. Let's say there's someone who feels euler angles are better. So he changes create_quat to create_euler. He modifies all the places create_quat is used (which is about 40 places) and he misses 3 or 4 places where it's called.
He then ships it to production. Boom The extra time debugging production when it crashes, ans also extra time tediously finding where create_quat was used. All of that could have been saved by a type checker.
I'm a big python guy. But I'm also big into haskell. So I know both the typing worlds and the untyped worlds really well. Most people who complain like you literally have mostly come from a python background where typing isn't used much. Maybe you used types occasionally but not in a big way.
If you used both untyped languages and typed languages extensively you will know that types are intrinsically better. It's not even a contest. Anyone who still debates this stuff just lacks experience.
WTF is “an anecdotal metric”‽ That just sounds like an evasive way to say “I want to make up numbers I can’t justify”.
> wtf is direction object? Is it in Cartesian or is it in polar? Is in 2D or 3D?
This seems very domain-specific.
> Most people who complain like you literally have mostly come from a python background where typing isn't used much. Maybe you used types occasionally but not in a big way.
> If you used both untyped languages and typed languages extensively you will know that types are intrinsically better. It's not even a contest. Anyone who still debates this stuff just lacks experience.
I’ve got many years of experience with static typed languages over a 25 year career. Just because somebody disagrees with you, it doesn’t mean they are a clueless junior.
It's a metric (how much more productive he is), and anecdotal (base only on his experience). Pretty obvious I would have thought.
> This seems very domain-specific.
It was an example from one domain but all domains have types of things. Are you really trying to say that only 3D games specifically would benefit from static types?
> Just because somebody disagrees with you, it doesn’t mean they are a clueless junior.
Clueless senior then I guess? Honestly I don't know how you can have this much experience and still not come to the obvious conclusion. Perhaps you only write small scripts or solo projects where it's more feasible to get away without static types?
What would you say to someone who said "I have 25 years of experience reading books with punctuation and I think that punctuation is a waste of time. Just because you disagree with me doesn't mean I'm clueless."?
What I have to have scientific papers for every fucking opinion I have? The initial Parent post was an anecdotal opinion. Your post is an opinion. I can't have opinions here without citing a scientific paper that's 20 pages long and no is going to read but just blindly trust because it's "science"? Come on. What I'm saying is self evident to people who know. There are thousands of things like this in the world where people just know even though statistical proof hasn't been measured or established. For example eating horse shit everyday probably isn't healthy even though it there isn't SCIENCE that proves this action as unhealthy directly. Type checking is just one of those things.
OBVIOUSLY I think development is overall much better, much faster and much safer with types. I can't prove it with metrics, but I'm confident my "anecdotal" metrics with I prefaced with "roughly" are "roughly" ballpark trueish.
>This seems very domain-specific.
Domain specific? Basic orientation with quaternions and euler angles is specific to reality. Orientation and rotations exist in reality and there are thousands and thousands of domains that use it.
Also the example itself is generic. Replace euler angles and quats with vectors and polar coordinates. Or cats and dogs. Same shit.
>I’ve got many years of experience with static typed languages over a 25 year career. Just because somebody disagrees with you, it doesn’t mean they are a clueless junior.
The amount of years of experience is irrelevant. I know tons of developers with only 5 years of experience who are better than me and tons of developers with 25+ who are horrible.
I got 25 years as well. If someone disagrees with me (on this specific topic), it absolutely doesn't mean they are a junior. It means they lack knowledge and experience. This is a fact. It's not an insult. It just means for a specific thing they don't have experience or knowledge which is typical. I'm sure there's tons of things where you could have more experience. Just not this topic.
If you have experience with static languages it likely isn't that extensive. You're likely more of a old school python guy who spend a ton of time programming without types.
No, but if you’re going to say things like “increase safety by roughly 2x” then if you can’t even identify the unit then you are misleading people.
It’s absolutely fine to have an opinion. It’s not fine to make numbers up.
> I'm confident my "anecdotal" metrics with I prefaced with "roughly" are "roughly" ballpark trueish.
Okay, so if it’s 1.5×, 2.0×, or 2.5×… again, what metric? What unit are we dealing with?
You’re claiming that it’s “in the ballpark”, but what is “in the ballpark”? The problem is not one of accuracy, the problem is that it’s made up.
> If someone disagrees with me (on this specific topic), it absolutely doesn't mean they are a junior. It means they lack knowledge and experience. This is a fact.
It’s not a fact, it’s ridiculous. You genuinely believe that if somebody disagrees with you, it’s a fact that they lack knowledge and experience? It’s not even remotely possible for somebody to have an informed difference of opinion with you?
So when I talk about multipliers I have to have a unit? What is the unit of safety? I can't say something like 2x more safe? I just have to say more safe? What if I want to emphasize that it can DOUBLE safety?
Basically with your insane logic people can't talk about productivity or safety or multipliers at the same time because none of these concepts have units.
Look I told YOU it's anecdotal, EVERYONE can read it. You're no longer "deceived" and no one else is.
>Okay, so if it’s 1.5×, 2.0×, or 2.5×… again, what metric? What unit are we dealing with?
If you don't have the capacity to understand what I'm talking about without me specifying a unit than I'll make one up:
I call it safety units. The amount of errors you catch in production. That's my unit: 1 caught error in prod in a year. For Untyped languages let's say you catch about 20 errors a year. With types that goes down to 10.
>It’s not a fact, it’s ridiculous. You genuinely believe that if somebody disagrees with you, it’s a fact that they lack knowledge and experience? It’s not even remotely possible for somebody to have an informed difference of opinion with you?
What? and you think all opinions are equal and everyone has the freedom to have any opinion they want and no one can be right or wrong because everything is just an opinion? Do all opinions need to be fully respected even though it's insane?
Like my example, if you have the opinion that eating horse shit is healthy, I'm going to make a judgement call that your opinion is WRONG. Lack of Typing is one of these "opinions"
> If someone disagrees with me (on this specific topic), it absolutely doesn't mean they are a junior. It means they lack knowledge and experience. This is a fact.
You think it’s impossible for anybody to have an informed opinion that disagrees with yours. You literally think yours is the only possible valid opinion. If that doesn’t set off big warning bells in your head, you are in dire need of a change in attitude.
This conversation is not productive, let’s end it.
I mean do you think we should have a fair and balanced discussion about the merits of child molestation and rape? We should respect other people's opinion and not tell them they are wrong if there opinion differs? That's what I think of your opinion. I think your opinion is utterly wrong, and I do think my opinion is the valid opinion.
Now that doesn't mean I disrespect your opinion. That doesn't mean your not allowed to have a different opinion. It just means I tell you straight up, you're wrong and you lack experience. You're free to disagree with that and tell me the exact same thing. I'm just blunt, and I welcome you to be just as blunt to me. Which you have.
The thing I don't like about you is that you turned it into discussion about opinions and the nature of holding opinions. Dude. Just talk about the topic. If you think I'm wrong. Tell me straight up. Talk about why I'm wrong. Don't talk about my character and in what manner I should formulate opinions and what I think are facts.
>This conversation is not productive, let’s end it.
I agree let's end it. But let's be utterly clear. YOU chose to end it with your actions by shifting the conversation into saying stuff like "you literally think yours is the only possible opinion." Bro. All you need to do is state why you think my opinion is garbage and prove it wrong. That's the direction of the conversation, you ended it by shifting it to a debate on my character.
Or have enough experience to have lived e.g. the J2EE and C++ template hells and see where this is going.
In general types outweigh no types EVEN with the above.