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I'm in the middle of some serious refactoring (banking application)... Part of it is JavaScript code and the other part is C#. Whenever I do some changes in C# code I feel like in haven. Maintaining code (especially written by people who no longer work on the project) is soooo much easier within strongly-typed language. I just hope sanity will prevail and one day we will have a chance to write strongly-typed client side code too (directly and without plugins). And yeah, I like jQuery etc. but this recent blind love for JS is just scary...
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You may want a gander at typescript ?
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That's why I wrote "directly and without plugins". TypeScript is nice but like other tools of its kind there's a drawback: you debug other code than you write 
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What's the point of strong typing if you still have to debug your code?
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Is this a serious question?
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Absolutely. What's a point of an incomplete type system which does not carry a correctness proof? If you go into strong typing, do it properly, or don't do it at all.
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The fact that code compiles doesn't prove that business requirements are met. Strong typing makes live easier but it doesn't guarantee that program is doing what it should from end user perspective.
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And how debugging is going to ensure such conformance? QA testing can help, yes, but not debugging. Debugging is useless, as long as your code is guaranteed to do exactly what is specified. If program is working incorrectly from end users' perspective, then specification have to be fixed, not the code.
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I didn't say that debugging is going to ensure conformance to business requirements. All I'm saying is that it is ridiculous to say that strongly typed programs don't need to be debugged. Strongly typed programs contain bugs too. And debugging (stepping through code with a debugger attached) is also a normal part of development. Sometimes its the only way to check what the program is really doing - cause the guys who wrote that +100K LOC (5 years ago) are no longer working at the company end documentation is almost non existing...
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This is not what I said.
I said, why bother using "strong" type system if you still have to debug your code afterwards? You either use a real, proper static type system and then you never have to debug your code interactively, or you'll be more flexible with a dynamic type system and do all that hipster interactive stuff.
People tend to overuse interactive debugging, and it is really sad. Debugging is not a "normal" part of development. It should be considered a very last resort, when nothing else works. With a proper type system you don't have to step through your code to find out, what the program is "really doing" - types will tell you all about it straight away.
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vl2 wrote: What's the point of strong typing if you still have to debug your code?
Presumably you either don't understand what strong typing is or you don't know how to debug any application.
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Presumably you never heard of a proper strong, dependent typing. I never had to debug my Coq or Agda code - if it compiles, it works, and it is *proven* to be correct. Why debugging then?
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I agree - the biggest issue I have with Ruby is the duck typing, it's really easy to get oneself in trouble and it results in bad architecture (actually, no architecture). I really miss strong typing and good design practices (mainly interfaces and inheritance) that are simply missing. It doesn't mean that one can't do those things in Ruby, it's just that they're not typically done.
I just started looking at WebSharper[^], mainly out of curiosity, and it's interesting that they can convert F# to Javascript. Some interesting possibilities, and it's more in the direction that I'd like to see code being written - write in some common language and use the damn computer to generate the JavaScript. Seems like we're not using our tools to their fullest capacity, but that's nothing new.
Marc
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morzel wrote: Part of it is JavaScript code and the other part is C#
at least there is no XML
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I'm a C++ coder. Aside from a quick note that C# code doesn't distinguish between namespace and class member stuff (always that single dot to divide things, instead of a nice :: ), I feel your pain.
Yet, I understand why javaScript (and php) are weakly typed. Ultimately, as a web page, everything ends up as text. It does make sense if you consider that much of what one does ends up, eventually, as HTML - crudely one could argue it has only one type, which is text. So, although the typing in a strongly typed language makes undocumented maintainability more evident - if one ignores overloaded functions - I understand why one would move to the other side and eliminate casts and conversion.
PHP, for what it's worth, does have their === operator which is, by-and-large, a way to do some strongly-typed comparisons.
There's a place for weakly typed languages - it's a specialization with a place.
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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the point is beginners rarely never follow tutorial whose subject is "refactor this 100 000 LOC project"
It's harder to appreciate strong typing from the beginner point of view.
For the one that already lost its hair once, the advantages are crystal clear.
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Nicolas Dorier wrote: harder to appreciate strong typing from the beginner point of view
Unrelated, but that reminds me of when I was just learning BASIC -- using floats (x) and heard about integers (x%), and thought, why would would I want to use an integer when the floats work just fine?
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That was a good question :p
I guess you understood when it bit you the hard way because, in some odd condition, (a / b) * b != a . Then you started to appreciate the beauty of integers :p
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Nicolas Dorier wrote: the beauty of integers
And recognized the ugliness of BASIC.  That was once I started learning Pascal.
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2nd law in thermodynamics (physics): it's getting sucker ...
modified 18-Oct-13 15:51pm.
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I know this will incur the wrath of many, but client side js has always struck me as the playground for amateurs. Professionals are forced to deal with it and it's possible to write solid, clean js code, but most of what you see on the sites out there is both sloppy and ugly. Error handling seems to be an alien concept and single character variable names are the de facto standard. I can't remember the last time I had a browser up running a debugging session on my own stuff, popped up another tab to go somewhere, and didn't see a boatload of complaints about all manner of stupid and obvious things that no one even bothered to test for.
Add to that the fact that once you're on the client side you're basically in IfDef Hell trying to cope with the flakiness and inconsistency of a gazillion browser versions and it's not exactly what I'd call programmer's utopia.
I do web development because it pays money. It is, nonetheless, a crappy environment to code in. Client side js stuff just makes it worse.
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Sounds like someone needs a good break from programming.
Pick up John Gardner's "Freddy's Book". More evil, but less JavaScript and/or C#.
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I was surfing around the web and came across this french website[^] by Denis Dollfus. I just thought it would be hilarious to port this application to a tablet PC with touch screen, and let the cat play the shark. It should keep it busy for a while 
I ported the code to WPF VB and you could download that here[^]
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Well the AI in the fishes is sometimes more intellegent than the people visiting the Q&A. At least the fish try to stay away from the shark....
I think the net has enough pussy cats on it!
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