Optional Static Typing

[Donn Cave]

In article <1gpalw0.jj0p2njtof9N%aleaxit at yahoo.com>,
 aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli) wrote:

> John Roth <newsgroups at jhrothjr.com> wrote:
>    ...
> > question: static typing is an answer. What's the question?
> > (That's a paraphrase.)
> > 
> > The answer that everyone seems to give is that it
> > prevents errors and clarifies the program.
>    ...
> > Most of the kinds of error that static typing is supposed
> > to catch simply don't persist for more than a minute when
> > you do test driven development.
> 
> ...which is exactly the point of the famous post by Robert ("Uncle Bob")
> Martin on another artima blog,
> http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=4639 .

Wait a minute, isn't he same fellow whose precious
dependency inversion principle shows us the way to
support fully modular programming?  What would he
say about unit testing to catch up with changes in
dependent modules, do you think?  Do we have a
combinatorial explosion potential here?

   Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu