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From: gjr@hplgr2.hpl.hp.com (Guillermo (Bill) J. Rozas)
Subject: Re: R5RS?
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In-Reply-To: oz@nexus.yorku.ca's message of 5 Mar 96 13:42:14
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 18:37:30 GMT
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In article <OZ.96Mar5134214@nexus.yorku.ca> oz@nexus.yorku.ca (ozan s. yigit) writes:

|   Bill J. Rozas [somewhere in his response to matthias blume]:
|
|      |   		... But yet, I have changed my mind, because evidence is
|      |   mounting.
|
|      To you.  Again, it is a matter of taste, and I doubt that _technical_
|      evidence is mounting.  Perhaps statistics evidence, but since I am not
|      the average person/programmer/etc., I don't really care about
|      statistical evidence.
|
|   what would you count as "technical" evidence (as opposed to
|   "statistical evidence" which is often seen as technical evidence
|   as manifest in number of failures etc)? and how would you like it
|   presented, if not statistically.  i am very curious. tell me what
|   it takes to make it not "a matter of taste" and i (for one) will
|   look for it.

I'm not sure.  I would like to see non-negligible improvement accross
the board.  Programmers vary widely in ability.  Some need their hands
held.  Some may find that it crimps their style for an incrementally
small added benefit.

In general I'm interested in productivity, thus time from conception
to implementation in reasonable shape.  I will propose the conjecture
that for the top 5% of programmers (measured in productivity on a
standardized basis) the incremental productivity gain from a static
type checker in terms of fewer simple mistakes will be swamped by the
incremental cost in thinking and time taken by the repeated
invocations of the type checker.

At any rate, I would like to see studies done in this area.  I don't
know of any, but I will admit that I haven't looked for them.
