dynamic typing questions

[John Roth]

"Jason Tesser" <tesserfamily at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.352.1071846222.9307.python-list at python.org...
> I work for at a college where I am one of 2 full-time
> developers and we are looking to program a new
> software package fro the campus. This is a huge
> project as it will include everything from
> registration to
> business office.  We are considering useing Java or
> Python.  I for one don't like Java because I feel the
> GUI is clunky.  I also think that we could produce
> quality programs faster in Python.
>
> The other programmer here is very concerned about
> dynamic typing though in Python.  He feels like this
> would be too much of a hinderance on us and too easy
> for us to make a mistake and not catch it until
> runtime making debugging harder.
>
> OK what are your guys thoughts here?  How have you all
> overcome the lack of static typing?  Is Python a
> bad decision here?   By the way we will be using
> Postgres in the back if that matters to anyone.

Look into Test Driven Development (see Kent
Beck's book by that title.) As Jason says, unit testing
will pretty much eliminate any advantages of static typing,
leaving only the disadvantages.

Also, pervasive testing has so many other advantages
that I'm beginning to think that debuggers were the
single worst invention in history.

John Roth
>