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PEP 3107 and stronger typing (note: probably a newbie question)

Paddy paddy3118 at googlemail.com
Sat Jun 30 17:39:25 EDT 2007 
On Jun 30, 8:30 pm, Bruno Desthuilliers
<bdesth.quelquech... at free.quelquepart.fr> wrote:
> Paul Rubin a écrit :
>
> > Bruno Desthuilliers <bdesth.quelquech... at free.quelquepart.fr> writes:
>
> >>>    [A type system is a] tractable syntactic method for proving the
> >>>    absence of certain program behaviors by classifying phrases
> >>>    according to the kinds of values they compute. (Pierce 2002)."
>
> >>Is this supposed to contradict my assertion that *static* typing is
> >>for compilers ?
>
> > Yes, the main benefit these days is to prove the absence of certain
> > types of bugs in the program.
>
> As someone said, if declaring types thrices was enough to ensure
> correctness, I'd happily do so.
>
> I still maintain that the primary *practical* reason behind static
> typing is to provide optimization clues for the compiler.

The primary *practical* reason for static typing is that it allows
large software companies to convince customers that they have *the*
method to allow them to apply divide & conquer techniques to solve
their problems with a large team of programmers and justifying
large fees.

How many of those cancelled UK government software projects that
cost me hundreds of millions of pounds were programmed by people
espousing the greater safety of their static typing?

- Paddy.
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