Type inference was a mistake (borretti.me)

submitted 7 months ago by SuperFola@programming.dev to c/programming_languages@programming.dev

46 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] nous@programming.dev 39 points 7 months ago

The big problem with this take is that they seem to assume it is an all or nothing feature.

Personally I love how rust does it, types are inferred inside a body of a function where they matter less and are generally unambiguous (you need to specify them if they are ambiguous) as you often don't care as much about the exact type you have. But on function parameters are return types they are never inferred as these form the contract to the rest of your program and a unexpected change to one of these can result in your code breaking somewhere else entirely.

Personally I never really use the automatic type annotations in IDEs, they just add noise I rarely care about.

this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2024

58 points (86.2% liked)

Programming Languages

1160 readers

2 users here now

Hello!

This is the current Lemmy equivalent of https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/.

The content and rules are the same here as they are over there. Taken directly from the /r/ProgrammingLanguages overview:

This community is dedicated to the theory, design and implementation of programming languages.

Be nice to each other. Flame wars and rants are not welcomed. Please also put some effort into your post.

This isn't the right place to ask questions such as "What language should I use for X", "what language should I learn", and "what's your favorite language". Such questions should be posted in /c/learn_programming or /c/programming.

This is the right place for posts like the following:

"Check out this new language I've been working on!"
"Here's a blog post on how I implemented static type checking into this compiler"
"I want to write a compiler, where do I start?"
"How does the Java compiler work? How does it handle forward declarations/imports/targeting multiple platforms/?"
"How should I test my compiler? How are other compilers and interpreters like gcc, Java, and python tested?"
"What are the pros/cons of ?"
"Compare and contrast vs. "
"Confused about the semantics of this language"
"Proceedings from PLDI / OOPSLA / ICFP / "

See /r/ProgrammingLanguages for specific examples

Related online communities

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

armchair_progamer@programming.dev