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0 pointsduke_sam15y ago0 comments

It's an extension of the critique leveled at dynamically typed languages by Java/C/C++ devs. How can you possibly work in a world where function foo can return/expect any type?

The more dynamic (powerful?) the language the more leverage good, experienced developers have. They can achieve results in 10 lines of code that are hard/impossible in more static languages (closures, meta-classes etc.). The other edge of the sword is that one dud developer can bring your whole stack down by being too smart for their own good. The more dynamic the system the greater the risk. In Ruby as is pointed out you can have a developer on the other side of your code base royally screw you because he wants feature X of sequences to act differently.

As with all things it's a balancing act, how smart are your devs, how much time can you spend testing and how strict are your coding standards.

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joe_the_user15y ago

I can believe that such power can be achieved and scale within a single department-size group of "smart people".

The problem appears if or when you want to share the code between departments or give it to the world. Give "clever code" to someone who simply doesn't understand the whole process and they turn into a "dud developer" no matter how otherwise intelligent they are.

(And what's with down-voting the parent? It's a fair point even if I'm not in agreement)

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