OO or FP easier for beginners

[dimitarvp]

@adw632

So with a hispter type system if you don’t specify all options would you expect to get a compiler error?

Would that be a desirable outcome if you don’t want to specify every option always?

It’s handled quite well. You can specify only 2-3 fields of a struct and let the remaining 30+ be defaults:

Default in std::default - Rust

@adw632

I don’t see how types really help with options as they are mostly optional, aside from perhaps catching a dumb typo.

Much beyond that: interactions between options and how the defaults play into it. As mentioned in this (or other? can’t remember now) thread I had the misfortune of working with libraries and other people’s code where a library silently reverts config to defaults because you didn’t specify something well enough for it.

@adw632

There are options libraries like NimbleOptions that do validation including checks for unknown options being passed, I suggest using them, as we don’t need a type system for that.

NimbleOptions is fantastic and I wish every library that needs config used it. That being said, I already addressed this when I said the following:

@dimitarvp

The problems however are that MANY apps and libraries don’t utilize these well enough so as to properly parse / validate their inputs so we’re back to the eternal dilemma of “if you don’t make something mandatory people will always skip it”.

And yes I agree we hardly need static types in Elixir because of pattern-matching and guards. But there are blind spots in the community and I find myself wishing for stronger checks there (again, library configurations).

@adw632

Testing all the possible interactions, timings and exceptions that can occur in a parallel programing model where race conditions and deadlocks are possible is exceedingly difficult and in fact impossible.

That’s kind of moving the goalposts maybe, but I agree with your premise.

@adw632

Refactoring is never a big concern for me, and often a symptom of not having a sound structural methodology to begin with.

Finally, that’s a bit of a weird thing to say, refactoring is 100% inevitable. Hope you are not making the argument that we have to dream up 100% of the app before we hear the 50+ “I changed my mind” complaints from customers.