Re: [Caml-list] How to explain static typing to other people?

[oliver <oliver@first.in-berlin.de>]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 12:25:31PM -0700, Raoul Duke wrote:
> > One advantage is that the OCaml (and Haskell) compilers automatically infer
> > the correct type.
> >
> > In Java, you must always manually input the type, as far as I remember.
> 
> 
> i was under the impression, based on personal experience as well as
> hear-say, that anybody /really/ using haskell or ocaml or some such
> would actually be manually entering type signatures all the time,
> because they do not want to later have some incomprehensible error
> that does not point to a root cause.
[...]

It's possible (and possibly good style) to start with the signature.
If the problem is clear enough stated in the beginning.

Otherwise, it's possible to start with type inference as the helping tool,
and when the code is somewhat mature, create an mli-file to make things
less variable.

Which way to go depends on how much planning si done (and can be done)
in advcance.

But the talk had mentioned a lot more problems, not only type inference.
The comparision with unit testing also was nice. And many other aspects also.


Ciao,
   Oliver