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From: Richie Bielak <richieb@calfp.com>
Subject: Re: Static vs. Dynamic typing again (was Re: OO, C++, and something much better!)
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Eric Clayberg wrote:
> 
> Richie Bielak wrote:
> > but static typing _proves_ absence of certain kinds of errors.
> 
> That's all well and good, but if the percentage of those kinds of errors
> is absurdly low ...

That hasn't been my experience. I've used PASCAL, Modula-2 and now
Eiffel.
But that's only hearsay.

> 
> I'm actually somewhat ambivalent about static typing. I find it to be
> very useful in a language like C++ where the syntax is complex and the
> function invocation syntax makes it easy to transpose (or even leave
> out) arguments. 

What do you think about Eiffel?

[...]

> 
> The largest Smalltalk project I worked on was well over a million lines
> of code and had 10-30 people working on it at any one time. The largest
> Smalltalk project that I worked on by myself had over 100,000 lines of
> code in it. I have personally written over 400,000 lines of commercial
> Smalltalk code (ranging from shrink-wrapped apps to mission critical MIS
> apps).
> 

I'm impressed.

> Why do you ask?
> 

I find that static typing helps a lot on large projects. Let's say 
I change one of my classes (say, I add an argument to a routine). I
change
my code and then attempt to compile. The compiler will find all the
places
where my routine is used and will complain. Even routines that
get hardly ever executed (like error handlers or end of year processing
etc).

How do you handle this type of change in Smalltalk? How do you find
the dependancies? 

...richie

P.S. When I worked in Modula-2 our applications ranged 100,000 to
500,000 LOCs,
     and the current Eiffel project I'm working on is about 700K LOC.

-- 
* richieb@netlabs.net       - at home |  Richie Bielak             *
* richieb@calfp.com         - at work |                            *
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*        "Fight software piracy, use free software!" (me)          *
