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> I think Rich Hickey has a point that bugs like this almost certain get caught by running the program.

That is certainly correct... but that doesn't make it a good thing. One wants to catch bugs before the program is running, not after.





Depends which is quicker. If I catch a trivial bug on the first run, I just saved myself writing the type system to find it ahead of time.

When a bug like this can cause real world harm, we can't just bumper car program our way out of things. As engineers we should be able to provide real guarantees.

I do agree for safety critical systems, you’re right.

But I don’t think we are engineers. Software dev isn’t like engineering. You can’t change the structure of a bridge after it has been built by deploying code to prod in a minute. Software dev is just software dev, it’s not engineering or science. It has some parallels with craftsmanship, but it’s unique.




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