Types, Tests and Total Functions - a Perfect Storm [English]

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When static vs. dynamic language debates flare up, someone invariably says that static languages are best because the compiler catches so many potential bugs. To which the dynamic language advocates say, "that doesn't happen very often, and when it does your tests will catch it - you do have tests, don't you?"
Meanwhile, the debate about how to do error handling is almost as religious - do you do exceptions, error codes, assertions, contracts or something like optionals or result/ expected types?
Could it be that all these concerns are related - and that understanding _how_ they are related may help us to resolve these conflicts once and for all. More importantly, can we take the best of all worlds to arrive at the nirvana of understandable, maintainable, robust, correct, code? These are the questions we will ponder, and hopefully answer.

Phil Nash

Developer Advocate, JetBrains, UK

Phil is the author of the test frameworks Catch for C++ and Objective-C, and Swordfish for Swift. As Developer Advocate at JetBrains he's involved with CLion, AppCode and ReSharper C++. …