Considering Productivity Effects of Explicit Type Declarations

Abstract

Static types may be used both by the language implementation and directly by the user as documentation. Though much existing work focuses primarily on the implications of static types on the semantics of programs, relatively little work considers the impact on usability that static types provide. Though the omission of static type information may decrease program length and thereby improve readability, it may also decrease readability because users must then frequently derive type information manually while reading programs. As type inference becomes more popular in languages that are in widespread use, it is important to consider whether the adoption of type inference may impact productivity of developers.