Re: Intellisense and the psychology of typing

Responding to Andrew.queisser...

3) Users of dynamic languages are always developing/debugging running
programs where the current type of a variable is known and hence
Intellisense is possible again? My own limited experience with dynamic
languages (Ruby) is limited to edit-run cycles.

One of the common issues of the Interminable Static Vs. Dynamic Debates is that certain errors are caught statically that can only be caught at run-time in dynamic languages. The static proponents argue that this indicates a potential safety issue for released applications. The dynamic proponents invariably counter that, in practice, such run time errors are rare and, when they do occur, it is early in the development cycle.

While it is difficult to pinpoint exactly why that would be, the observation is so pervasive among dynamic practitioners that one must conclude that those sorts of defects are precluded by the general and unique /way/ that dynamic programs are constructed. So it seems quite plausible that such a construction paradigm might also reduce the value of Intellisense in such environments. If so, then resolving your question will be just as difficult as resolving whether static or dynamic languages are better. B-)


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