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smt88 | karma 21138 | avg karma 2.28 · 2021-11-25 16:32:57

Iterating on ideas is much quicker when the compiler tells you when you made a mistake or failed to change your code after changing your mind.

thevagrant | karma 747 | avg karma 2.52 · 2021-11-25 17:12:52

Honestly, I don't see much difference. You learn either way. People may have preferences, that's fine. A compiler isn't a magical tool that creates bug free code.

root_axis | karma 10530 | avg karma 3.57 · 2021-11-25 18:13:15

The difference is massive. Computers are many orders of magnitude better at this kind of thing than humans, especially in a large application where changing the shape of a single data structure can have cascading effects throughout the entire code base; you simply will not catch things a typechecker will.

thevagrant | karma 747 | avg karma 2.52 · 2021-11-26 02:45:25

An IDE does provide some help. Certainly, I'm not arguing against compilers. I was merely commenting on the "iterating on ideas is much quicker".

smt88 | karma 21138 | avg karma 2.28 · 2021-11-26 08:18:45

A compiler with a good type system catches a mistake instantly instead of at runtime.

The difference in time it saves the dev can be anywhere from a few seconds to minutes per mistake.

Multiplied by hundreds of mistakes, it makes a huge difference. And that's not even getting into the advantages of better autocomplete for external libraries.

As someone who has written many thousands of lines of PHP, JS, TS, C#, Java, and Python, I now find it baffling that someone would start a project in 2021 without a great type system as a safety net.

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