Interview at Lang.NEXT

[Craig Dillabaugh via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Wednesday, 4 June 2014 at 20:10:51 UTC, Ary Borenszweig wrote:
> On 6/4/14, 3:33 PM, Craig Dillabaugh wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 4 June 2014 at 17:31:56 UTC, Ary Borenszweig 
>> wrote:
>>> On 6/4/14, 1:27 PM, Meta wrote:
>>>> On Wednesday, 4 June 2014 at 06:19:05 UTC, Andrei 
>>>> Alexandrescu wrote:

clip

>>
>> But using function templates and the like you can still get 
>> fairly
>> 'Python-like' code in D.  I find dealing with types to be one 
>> of the
>> areas that requires the 'least' amount of mental effort in 
>> software
>> development. I don't understand why people see 'untyped' 
>> languages as
>> simpler for the most part.
>
> I was actually talking about having to specify types 
> everywhere, like in function signatures, the fields of classes 
> and structs, etc.
>
> You can still have a language that feels dynamic but is 
> statically typed. The compiler catches type-related bugs for 
> you, and you can prototype something very fast. Then you can 
> add type annotations (if you want). I wouldn't say this 
> language is 'untyped'.
>
> One such language is Julia.

OK, but my point was that specifying the type (at least for me) 
takes an insignificant amount of time (and is very useful months 
down the road when I am looking at the code, trying to figure out 
what it is supposed to do).

When declaring a variable, in almost every case, figuring out the 
proper type, and writing that type takes a fraction of a second.

I brought up templates because I figured one objection to my 
claim would be that it is easier to write functions in Python 
because you don't have to specify a type.  D templates take a bit 
more work, but for simple tasks (like you would commonly have in 
a scripting situtation) they should be about as simple as their 
Python equivalents.