Class Browsers vs Static Types

[Joachim Durchholz]

Andreas Rossberg wrote:
>
> Note however, that a static type system gives you a certain set of
> guarantees not only for every line of code, but for every possible
> execution path (to speak in imperative terms). A test suite can almost
> never achieve that.

<shrug> Smalltalkers maintain that test suites are good enough for
business programming, and that they prefer to put their time into the
test suite instead of getting the typing right: the test suite approach
will allow them to guarantee correctness on those execution paths that
matter (and help them keep focus on the work at hand), while the static
typing approach will waste time to make the code run under circumstances
that will never happen, plus making the code less universally reusable.

Personally, I don't adhere to this philosophy, but they seem to be happy
with it. (And they make sure that their tools make testing dead easy.)

They're even developing reusable frameworks in this fashion, so the case
for static typing isn't *that* matter-of-course as one might think.

Regards,
Joachim
--
This is not an official statement from my employer or from NICE.