Pytest is fast by Mark Seemann
Ever since I became aware of the distinction between statically and dynamically typed languages, I've struggled to understand the attraction of dynamically typed languages. As regular readers may have noticed, this is a bias that doesn't sit well with me. Clearly, there are advantages to dynamic languages that I fail to notice. Is it a question of mindset? Or is it a combination of several small advantages?
Rapid feedback is a cornerstone of modern software engineering. I've always considered the feedback from the compiler an important mechanism, but I've recently begun to realize that it comes with a price. While a good type system keeps you honest, compilation takes time, too.
Since I've been so entrenched in the camp of statically typed languages (C#, F#, Haskell), I've tended to regard compilation as a mandatory step. And since the compiler needs to run anyway, you might as well take advantage of it. Use the type system to make illegal states unrepresentable, and all that.
Even so, I've noticed that compilation time isn't a fixed size. This observation surely borders on the banal, but with sufficient cognitive bias, it can, apparently, take years to come to even such a trivial conclusion. After initial years with various programming languages, my formative years as a programmer were spent with C#. As it turns out, the C# compiler is relatively fast.
