Comments on: Continous Tax? http://almaer.com/blog/continous-tax blogging about life, the universe, and everything tech Sat, 08 Sep 2012 07:06:53 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Carl Gundel http://almaer.com/blog/continous-tax/comment-page-1#comment-37540 Carl Gundel Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:10:00 +0000 http://almaer.com/blog2/continous-tax#comment-37540 I have spent many thousands of hours coding in Smalltalk and Java. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. Java's static typing system is only a strength in that it makes it easy to write certain kinds of tools. These tools only partially make up for the very type system they are enabled by. Type declarations make up for a lot of noise in Java code, and Java's broken polymorphism is remedied by interfaces (which perhaps would be a nice language feature in better circumstances) which proliferate and cause cognitive overload because there are after a time too many pieces in the code to keep juggling in your mind. Smalltalk's dynamic typing makes writing clear and expressive code a simple matter. The importance of this cannot be overestimated. While there are a few refactorings that cannot be done in a dynamic language, there are refactoring tools for Smalltalk (and Groovy too I gather) and have been long before Java had them. Smalltalk cooperates so well with the mental processes of object oriented development that static type declarations only get in the your way. My 20 cents I have spent many thousands of hours coding in Smalltalk and Java. Both have their strengths and weaknesses.

Java’s static typing system is only a strength in that it makes it easy to write certain kinds of tools. These tools only partially make up for the very type system they are enabled by. Type declarations make up for a lot of noise in Java code, and Java’s broken polymorphism is remedied by interfaces (which perhaps would be a nice language feature in better circumstances) which proliferate and cause cognitive overload because there are after a time too many pieces in the code to keep juggling in your mind.

Smalltalk’s dynamic typing makes writing clear and expressive code a simple matter. The importance of this cannot be overestimated. While there are a few refactorings that cannot be done in a dynamic language, there are refactoring tools for Smalltalk (and Groovy too I gather) and have been long before Java had them. Smalltalk cooperates so well with the mental processes of object oriented development that static type declarations only get in the your way.

My 20 cents

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