::scr Touchy Feely?

[Piers Cawley]

Mark Hulme-Jones <ture@plig.net> writes:

> On Fri, Oct 25, 2002 at 04:20:16PM +0100, Piers Cawley wrote:
>> Oh ghod yes. I really, really, really don't like static
>> languages. There's so much bullshit and repetition. 
>
>>From the perspective of someone who, until recently, wrote mainly in
> dynamic languages (Perl and Ruby), but now works with a staticly typed
> language (Java), I can't say that I've found the transition too
> painful.  Yes, there's a lot of extra a bit more to type (or rather,
> to get my editor to complete for me), but the type information is put
> to great use by Intellij IDEA when it comes to refactoring,
> code-completion and syntax-checking.  Before I saw what's possible
> with this, I dismissed typing information as a waste of space.  I'd
> love to see implement the same sorts of features in an editor for a
> dynamic language, if only just to see if its possible. 

Well, I know that the 'extract method' refactoring is possible in Perl
because I've done it (but only to proof of concept level, not to the
point where I've written a UI for it) in Perl. And the original
Refactoring Browser was written in and for Smalltalk, which is
splendidly dynamic. 

> I have to agree that there's too much repetition though, and all
> those type casts in Java are foul...

There's too much repetition in my language of choice (Perl) too. But
I'm hoping that'll get fixed in Perl 6. I keep coming back and looking
at Smalltalk and thinking 'this is just *right*!' I guess I need to
find myself a nice, substantial but 'closed' project to do in
Smalltalk to try and really get the hang of the tools.

-- 
Piers

   "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a language in
    possession of a rich syntax must be in need of a rewrite."
         -- Jane Austen?