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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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actionfromafar ◴[] No.45143430[source]
A very weird counter point was when I learned how to do COM / OLE calls in assembler instead of C++.

It was easier to get right, there was no wizard behind the typed curtain, just a bunch of arguments.

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1. ahartmetz ◴[] No.45147609[source]
It's similar for a few other aspects of programming. After doing a minimum of assembly, it is impossible to get confused about pointers.