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Type checking is a symptom, not a solution

(programmingsimplicity.substack.com)
67 points mpweiher | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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jameshart ◴[] No.45142572[source]
All programmers need to try assembly programming just once.

Just a program counter, a stack, a flat addressable block of memory, and some registers.

You’ll very quickly learn how hard it is to program when you have complete responsibility for making sure that the state of the system is exactly as expected before a routine is called, and that it’s restored on return.

Every language tool we’ve built on top of that is to help programmers keep track of what data they stored where, what state things should be in before particular bits of code are run, and making it harder to make dumb mistakes like running some code that will only work on data of one sort on data of a totally different structure.

Of course types are a solution. You just have no idea what the problem was.

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1. wazdra ◴[] No.45143298[source]
Note that this is not incompatible with the author's view. The function abstraction does solve something: a problem we faced in the 20th century.

While I don't know whether I agree with their view, I do see that, once we've used the function abstraction to build a C compiler, and used this C compiler to build a proper OS, there is possibility for such an OS to provide entirely new abstractions, and to forego (almost) completely with functions.