Re: "no variable or argument declarations are necessary."

Op 2005-10-05, Diez B. Roggisch schreef <deets@nospam.web.de>:
>> This is naive. Testing doesn't guarantee anything. If this is what you
>> think about testing, then testing gives you a false impression of
>> security. Maybe we should drop testing.
>
> Typechecking is done by a reduced lamda calculus (System F, which is
> ML-Style), whereas testing has the full power of a turing complete
> language. So _if_ one has to be dropped, it would certainly be
> typechecking.

Sure, But allow me this silly analogy.

Going out on a full test-drive will also reveal your tires are flat.
So if you one has to be dropped, a full test drive or a tire check
it would certainly be the tired check. But IMO the tire check
is still usefull.

> Additionally, testing gives you the added benefit of actually using your
> decelared APIs - which serves documentation purposes as well as
> securing your design decisions, as you might discover bad design while
> actually writing testcases.

Hey, I'm all for testing. I never suggested testing should be dropped
for declarations

> Besides that, the false warm feeling of security a successful
> compilation run has given many developers made them check untested and
> actually broken code into the VCS. I've seen that _very_ often! And the
> _only_ thinng that prevents us from doing so is to enforce tests.

I wonder how experienced are these programmers? I know I had this
feeling when I started at the univeristy, but before I left I
already wrote my programs in rather small pieces that were tested
before moving on.

> But
> these are more naturally done in python (or similar languages) as every
> programmer knows "unless the program run sucsessfully, I can't say
> anything about it" than in a statically typed language where the
> programmer argues "hey, it compiled, it should work!"

Again I do have to wonder about how experienced these programmers are.

-- 
Antoon Pardon