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0 pointseru6y ago0 comments

I thought the ML family of languages showed that long ago? I guess TypeScript popularized the notion.

0 comments

ML family has "type inference", which means the compiler figured out the type even if not explicitly written into the code. However, the language spec is still statically typed - an int will not turn into a string and vice versa (ex: "1").

Javascript and ruby, the underlying types can change depending on where the code is in execution - a variable holding a 1 can turn into a "1" and back (implicit type conversion - try 3 * "3"). This leads to a whole class of bugs not possible in a statically typed codebase where explicit conversion needs to happen - I have no hard data, but I remember debugging this type of stuff far too often and far too many times when I could've spend my time better elsewhere. (but I actually like ruby a lot!)

Type checking is not the same as being statically vs. dynamically typed!

abhorrence6y ago

> a variable holding a 1 can turn into a "1" and back

This is true of Javascript, but not of Ruby.

  irb(main):001:)> 3 * "3"
  TypeError: String can't be coerced into Fixnum

People commonly conflate dynamic typing with weak typing, Ruby has the former, but not the latter (with some explicit exceptions, e.g. to_ary and friends).

That's not to say you can't still end up with some interesting problems though -- if we just slightly change your example:

  a = 3
  b = 3
  # later...
  a = "oops"
  product = a * b
  # product is now "oopsoopsoops"

But this isn't due to automatic "weak types" style coercion -- just that Ruby lets you build a repeated string by multiplying a string by a number.

eruOP6y ago

The alternative view is that those so-called 'dynamically typed' or 'untyped' languages should really be called 'monotyped languages' since all variables and expressions have the same type: a giant union of all possibilities.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8206562

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