Thoughts on Guido's ITC audio interview

[Dave Benjamin]

Sakesun Roykiattisak wrote:
> 
>> What's being ignored is that type information is useful for other things
>> than compile type checking. The major case in point is the way IDEs
>> such as IntelliJ and Eclipse use type information to do refactoring, code
>> completion and eventually numerous other things. A Java programmer
>> using IntelliJ or Eclipse can eliminate the advantage that Python
>> used to have, and possibly even pull ahead.
>>  
> 1. Automatic refactoring never solve the readability issue.

True, but with the aid of automatic refactoring, you can make code more 
readable, by splitting up classes and functions, giving things better 
names, etc.

Another readability issue in a similar vein is "intellisense" / 
context-sensitive menus. They allow you to give every class and method 
really long or confusing names without slowing you down, since you can 
just pick it from a menu. But I think this has some negative consequences.

First, as you've stated, you still have to read the code. Second, you 
become reliant on these menus, rather than just "flowing". For instance, 
I almost never have to look up documentation for any of Python's list, 
dictionary, and string methods. They're short and simple, and they're 
easy to memorize. I think this is at least partially a consequence of 
the fact that people type them in, by hand, all the time, so they're 
designed to be friendly and memorable.

> 2. I've never been lucky enough to have enough resource for those IDE.

It's worth noting that IntelliJ IDEA has gotten rather slow and bulky 
with the more recent releases. It used to be pretty quick. Emacs, which 
was at one point considered a total resource hog, is lean and mean in 
comparison, and doesn't seem to be expanding much these days... =)

Dave