does lack of type declarations make Python unsafe?

[Tim Rowe]

On Mon, 16 Jun 2003 21:01:42 +0000, Bruno Desthuilliers
<bdesth.nospam at removeme.free.fr> wrote:

>Tim Rowe wrote:
>(snip)
>
>> So if we're going to have meaningless
>> polemic, let me try mine :-)

>Please be serious. 

I consider it at least as serious as the post I was replying to,
though in my case the exaggeration to the point of comedy was
intention (I don't know about successful).  No, the compiler and other
static testing won't catch all the bugs.  But it has been pretty
thoroughly shown that dynamic testing won't catch them all either.
And the research I've seen indicates that the two techniques catch
pretty much non-overlapping sets of bugs.

Go back to my parody of Anton's position: which do you think we can do
without in our diet? Fibre or vitamins?  Ok, now which do you think we
can do without in our software assurance?  Static testing or dynamic
testing?

(As an aside, when the project manager comes along and says we have to
cut something to meet timescales, do you think it will be compilation
or test that's more likely to be cut?)