I graduated in 1990 in Electrical Engineering and since then I have been in university, doing research in the field of DSP. To me programming is more a tool than a job.
Do not ask this question to an Ada programmer: we are the hard-core of strong typing :-) :-)
Seriously, as many said, correctness is a big plus of strong typing. I say strong typing and not just typing since C, for example, is typed but not strongly (it converts silently between integer/pointers/chars/float/...). In a strongly typed instead no conversions are done by default and mixing different types by mistake is impossible.
Few years ago I wrote a program that made a .dot graph starting from Ada code, showing the dependence among packages. The code uses both package names and the names of the files that contain the package. Initially I used String for both of them, but I discovered that I was keeping mixing them (passing a filename when a package name was expected).
The solution was very simple: I just defined
type Filename is new String;
type Package_Name is new String;
and the compiler prevented me from mixing them. A good portion of potential bugs never made beyond the compilation stage.
Of course, strong typing reduces a bit the flexibility in your code. In languages like Matlab or Rudy variable can change value type dynamically and you can call procedures with any type of parameter you want. Indeed, because of this, I find this kind of languages a good choice for short or "short lived" fast-and-dirty software: you write it in little time and it does the work you wanted. If it is short lived, you do not care about maintainability, if it is short, it is quite easy to master it anyway.
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Do not ask this question to an Ada programmer: we are the hard-core of strong typing :-) :-)
Seriously, as many said, correctness is a big plus of strong typing. I say strong typing and not just typing since C, for example, is typed but not strongly (it converts silently between integer/pointers/chars/float/...). In a strongly typed instead no conversions are done by default and mixing different types by mistake is impossible.
Few years ago I wrote a program that made a .dot graph starting from Ada code, showing the dependence among packages. The code uses both package names and the names of the files that contain the package. Initially I used
Stringfor both of them, but I discovered that I was keeping mixing them (passing a filename when a package name was expected).The solution was very simple: I just defined
and the compiler prevented me from mixing them. A good portion of potential bugs never made beyond the compilation stage.
Of course, strong typing reduces a bit the flexibility in your code. In languages like Matlab or Rudy variable can change value type dynamically and you can call procedures with any type of parameter you want. Indeed, because of this, I find this kind of languages a good choice for short or "short lived" fast-and-dirty software: you write it in little time and it does the work you wanted. If it is short lived, you do not care about maintainability, if it is short, it is quite easy to master it anyway.