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I don't consider it productive to be personal about technical topics. It's best to divorce yourself and the other party from the issue to limit as much bias as

I don't consider it productive to be personal about technical topics. It's best to divorce yourself and the other party from the issue to limit as much bias as possible. You don't need to worry about the good-faithness of an objective, egalitarian discussion. It's never truly objective, but you can at least catch yourself saying things like "I might think less of you as a developer" and recognize that's a preconceived notion. In some cases, it may be turn out to be accurate, but it's definitely not always. Dynamically typed languages have had an important role historically in software. We should not categorically denounce people who prefer it as lesser developers. I also generally prefer static types.

insanitybit 3y ago
I explicitly said "as a developer" because it's not a personal judgment. You can be a good person and also have a terrible take as a software engineer. > We should not categorically denounce people who prefer it as lesser developers I don't think you've justified this point. I'm comfortable with my position on this.
- eduction 3y ago
  What you say is true, but it’s also true that the person you are replying specifically made their remarks about productivity - you’re both talking about what is best at work. It seems reasonable to argue that statements that you won’t even discuss X any more and would rather judge the person as less competent professionally are unproductive. Not saying I agree, btw. But it does seem like a pretty basic point. One of you is talking about preserving your sanity and the other about output. It’s not necessarily a disagreement even.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    > any more and would rather judge the person as less competent professionally That is absolutely NOT what the other poster said. They said they _MAY_ judge them that way.
    - eduction 3y ago
      Fair point, you're right! I still think it's reasonable to argue that's not a "productive" approach, but like I said, that's not my own opinion, I just think it's a reasonable argument.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  to add, I agree with you mostly. I don't necessarily think it makes someone a "lesser developer" if they prefer untyped languages, but I DO think they've either had to maintain anything long term or it stayed relatively small. Whether that makes them lesser or not isn't really for me to say, but I can say I'm definitely on board with the idea that types increase productivity the longer a system is maintained. Unless used poorly, types don't automatically mean you use them well, but they make it a hell of a lot easier to do the right thing.
- bitblender 3y ago
  Again, I don't mean "personal" in the sense that you are making a statement about someone's worth as a person. It's "personal" because you extrapolate information about an individual person's technical skills from a single opinion than you have any real factual justification to do so. People will always find ways to defy your preconceived notions.
loup-vaillant 3y ago
Some prejudices are rational. To paraphrase, it would take an enormous amount of prior trust and respect before I even humour someone trying me to convince me the sky is green with a straight face. Some issues are settled enough that there is no need to discus them any further. It is okay to automatically mark people on the wrong side of such issues… let’s say ill-informed. Static typing, I believe, is close to being one of those issues.
- kdmccormick 3y ago
  I think this is OK as long as you keep your mind open to situations that you have not considered. Imagine someone is working in a relatively niche new programming language ecosystem which is dynamically typed, allowing the language to have some richness that modern type systems don't support. I don't have an example because I don't know of any such language in 2023... BUT back in the 70s and 80s this would have been Lisp. Lisp couldn't have been strictly typed back then because, AFAICT, type systems hadn't advanced enough to express the sort of metaprogramming that made Lisp unique and awesome. This was at a time when most popular languages were strictly typed. I would hope that you would keep your mind open to whatever that maps to in the 2020s. Now, if someone says "I like JS over TS because types are annoying and slow me down", then yeah, I don't have much patience for that either.
  - digging 3y ago
    You make points that seem great to me although I know almost nothing about Lisp or 20th century programming. The thing is, I've yet to encounter a single instance of such an argument today. Every single time it ends up being "I like JS over TS because types are annoying and slow me down". It hadn't even occurred to me that laziness and sloppiness weren't the the only reasons to write in dynamically typed language. I suppose what I'm saying is I'm quite interested in seeing what kind of evolution some dynamically typed language could offer in the future. Although with no signs of its coming, I'm going to stick to TS because it's objectively better for anything but very small projects.
    - hansvm 3y ago
ilaksh 3y ago
As someone who usually prefers JavaScript over TypeScript but has used many typed languages over the years and generally finds then easier to work with in a way, I agree that one should not pre-judge based on something like that. But he's just being honest. Many developers have been making that judgement for many months or even years.
HideousKojima 3y ago
Nah, someone opposed to typing is either a shit developer and/or a madman who codes too clever by half mad shenanigans that take advantage of the lack of strong typing. I wouldn't want to have to maintain or depend on code written by either. For the very rare cases where a lack of strong typing is needed, most languages with strong typing offer ways to handle that (i.e. the Object and Dynamic types in C#)
mvdtnz 3y ago
I think you're being a bit too sensitive, and it's not personal. Someone is espousing a (bad) technical opinion about their field of work, it's not unreasonable to say you respect them less in their field of work. That's not personal. It's like if you met a builder who refused to use a hammer and insisted on bashing nails in with the back of their drill. It's not "personal" to say you'd respect that person less as a builder, regardless of how much you'd enjoy having a drink with them.
- bitblender 3y ago
  It is "personal" if you attach someone's technical opinion to broader implications about their own competence. If you disagree with a technical opinion, say so and move on, there is no reason to even discuss someone's own personal skillset, experience, or value as a developer. It's a silly fallacy to automatically label people who disagree with you as incompetent. All it does is foster bias and stifle actual discussion. The responses to this post are evidence that this is not as cut and dry as the original posts suggests, so I suggest we try our best not to cover our ears and embrace tribalism just because we think less of someone's opinion. I don't think I'm being oversensitive by saying this is unproductive dogmatism. It is my honest opinion, yet I do not extrapolate to mean anything about the proponents' value as a developer. Unconscious bias is a pervasive problem for everyone, especially when it comes to binary holy wars like static vs. dynamic types. This is more akin to a builder who uses a nail gun rather than a hammer. Hammer enthusiasts can either acknowledge that both approaches have tradeoffs or they can petulantly insist that people who don't use their methods aren't "real" builders.
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    I'm sorry but this is a discussion about their competence. You can't separate someone's opinions on technical topics from their competence in the very technical field you're discussing. If a cartographer has the "opinion" that the world is flat then that directly speaks to their competence as a cartographer.
    - bitblender 3y ago

insanitybit 3y ago

I explicitly said "as a developer" because it's not a personal judgment. You can be a good person and also have a terrible take as a software engineer. > We should not categorically denounce people who prefer it as lesser developers I don't think you've justified this point. I'm comfortable with my position on this.

eduction 3y ago
What you say is true, but it’s also true that the person you are replying specifically made their remarks about productivity - you’re both talking about what is best at work. It seems reasonable to argue that statements that you won’t even discuss X any more and would rather judge the person as less competent professionally are unproductive. Not saying I agree, btw. But it does seem like a pretty basic point. One of you is talking about preserving your sanity and the other about output. It’s not necessarily a disagreement even.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  > any more and would rather judge the person as less competent professionally That is absolutely NOT what the other poster said. They said they _MAY_ judge them that way.
  - eduction 3y ago
    Fair point, you're right! I still think it's reasonable to argue that's not a "productive" approach, but like I said, that's not my own opinion, I just think it's a reasonable argument.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
to add, I agree with you mostly. I don't necessarily think it makes someone a "lesser developer" if they prefer untyped languages, but I DO think they've either had to maintain anything long term or it stayed relatively small. Whether that makes them lesser or not isn't really for me to say, but I can say I'm definitely on board with the idea that types increase productivity the longer a system is maintained. Unless used poorly, types don't automatically mean you use them well, but they make it a hell of a lot easier to do the right thing.
bitblender 3y ago
Again, I don't mean "personal" in the sense that you are making a statement about someone's worth as a person. It's "personal" because you extrapolate information about an individual person's technical skills from a single opinion than you have any real factual justification to do so. People will always find ways to defy your preconceived notions.

loup-vaillant 3y ago

Some prejudices are rational. To paraphrase, it would take an enormous amount of prior trust and respect before I even humour someone trying me to convince me the sky is green with a straight face. Some issues are settled enough that there is no need to discus them any further. It is okay to automatically mark people on the wrong side of such issues… let’s say ill-informed. Static typing, I believe, is close to being one of those issues.

kdmccormick 3y ago
I think this is OK as long as you keep your mind open to situations that you have not considered. Imagine someone is working in a relatively niche new programming language ecosystem which is dynamically typed, allowing the language to have some richness that modern type systems don't support. I don't have an example because I don't know of any such language in 2023... BUT back in the 70s and 80s this would have been Lisp. Lisp couldn't have been strictly typed back then because, AFAICT, type systems hadn't advanced enough to express the sort of metaprogramming that made Lisp unique and awesome. This was at a time when most popular languages were strictly typed. I would hope that you would keep your mind open to whatever that maps to in the 2020s. Now, if someone says "I like JS over TS because types are annoying and slow me down", then yeah, I don't have much patience for that either.
- digging 3y ago
  You make points that seem great to me although I know almost nothing about Lisp or 20th century programming. The thing is, I've yet to encounter a single instance of such an argument today. Every single time it ends up being "I like JS over TS because types are annoying and slow me down". It hadn't even occurred to me that laziness and sloppiness weren't the the only reasons to write in dynamically typed language. I suppose what I'm saying is I'm quite interested in seeing what kind of evolution some dynamically typed language could offer in the future. Although with no signs of its coming, I'm going to stick to TS because it's objectively better for anything but very small projects.
  - hansvm 3y ago

ilaksh 3y ago

As someone who usually prefers JavaScript over TypeScript but has used many typed languages over the years and generally finds then easier to work with in a way, I agree that one should not pre-judge based on something like that. But he's just being honest. Many developers have been making that judgement for many months or even years.

HideousKojima 3y ago

Nah, someone opposed to typing is either a shit developer and/or a madman who codes too clever by half mad shenanigans that take advantage of the lack of strong typing. I wouldn't want to have to maintain or depend on code written by either. For the very rare cases where a lack of strong typing is needed, most languages with strong typing offer ways to handle that (i.e. the Object and Dynamic types in C#)

mvdtnz 3y ago

I think you're being a bit too sensitive, and it's not personal. Someone is espousing a (bad) technical opinion about their field of work, it's not unreasonable to say you respect them less in their field of work. That's not personal. It's like if you met a builder who refused to use a hammer and insisted on bashing nails in with the back of their drill. It's not "personal" to say you'd respect that person less as a builder, regardless of how much you'd enjoy having a drink with them.

bitblender 3y ago
It is "personal" if you attach someone's technical opinion to broader implications about their own competence. If you disagree with a technical opinion, say so and move on, there is no reason to even discuss someone's own personal skillset, experience, or value as a developer. It's a silly fallacy to automatically label people who disagree with you as incompetent. All it does is foster bias and stifle actual discussion. The responses to this post are evidence that this is not as cut and dry as the original posts suggests, so I suggest we try our best not to cover our ears and embrace tribalism just because we think less of someone's opinion. I don't think I'm being oversensitive by saying this is unproductive dogmatism. It is my honest opinion, yet I do not extrapolate to mean anything about the proponents' value as a developer. Unconscious bias is a pervasive problem for everyone, especially when it comes to binary holy wars like static vs. dynamic types. This is more akin to a builder who uses a nail gun rather than a hammer. Hammer enthusiasts can either acknowledge that both approaches have tradeoffs or they can petulantly insist that people who don't use their methods aren't "real" builders.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  I'm sorry but this is a discussion about their competence. You can't separate someone's opinions on technical topics from their competence in the very technical field you're discussing. If a cartographer has the "opinion" that the world is flat then that directly speaks to their competence as a cartographer.
  - bitblender 3y ago