Statically typed language vs Dynamically typed language.

Statically typed language and Dynamically typed language.

By Ayush garg

There are lots of programming languages in world. Every language follow some paradigm (A guild line follow to make program). For example c follow procedure oriented paradigm, C++ and java follow object oriented paradigm.  Similarly statically type and dynamically typed are another paradigm of programming language.

Important note – sometime programmer get confuse between static or dynamic typed language and static or dynamic memory allocation. Both are totally different concept.  Static or dynamic typed language is the paradigm of programming language and static or dynamic memory allocation is all the allocation of the memory of the variable.

To explain this concept I am going to use the python, C, C++, and Java language.

If you don’t know these or anyone of these languages doesn’t worry consider the program as a pseudo code.

So let’s begin.

Statically typed language-  

The programming language in which programmer has to define the data type of the variable is statically typed language. By defining type of the variable, the size of the variable and what kind of data will be stored by the variable is fixed is fixed at the compile time.

Consider the following code snippet-

Code in C /C++ / Java

int x=5;

int y=5;

int  z=x + y;

Here I define the type of each variable. If I don’t define the type of the variable an error occurs in my program.

If I write like that

int x=”My Article”;

Error occurs in my program. Because the type of the variable is fixed at compile. And int type variable only capable to store the integer value.

 Dynamically typed language- 

The programming language in which programmer doesn’t need to define the data type of the variable is dynamically typed language. The size and the type of the data store by the variable are decided at run time.

Consider the following code snippet-

Code in python

x=5

y=5

z=x+y

In the above code I don’t define the data type. So the compiler decides the data type of the variable at the run time it compile the code correctly.

If I write following code

x=”My Article”

It runs because the data type of the variable is decided at the run time.

Each and every paradigm has some merit and some demerit. So statically typed and dynamically typed paradigm also have some merit and demerit.

Merit and demerit of statically typed language and dynamically typed language –

Merit of dynamically typed language over staically typed language-

          1. The length of code little bit increase in statically typed language. The length of code is little bit small in dynamically typed language.

          2.  Programmer always needs to define the data type of the code. If the programmers forget to define the data type the variable error occurs in statically typed language. But programmers don’t need to worry about the data type of the variable in dynamically typed language. It all up to compiler in dynamically typed language.

Demerit of statically typed language over statically typed language-

1.    If some error occurs because of data type, code doesn’t compile. And error generate at compile time. Which is easily identified by the programmer in statically typed language. If some error occur because of the data type code compile but error occur at run time. Which is not easily identified in dynamically typed language.

2.    Consider that you need to modify the data store in the variable. So you write a code.

Consider following code snippet.

Code in C/ C++/ Java

int x=5;

X=x+5;

In above code compile time error occurs. Because C/ C++/ Java statically typed case sensitive language. And x and X are different.  And here we assign the data to the X which is not defining anywhere. So these all three language give the error “X undefined symbol”

Consider following code snippet.

Code in python

x=5

X=x+5

In above run, no error generates. Neither at compile time nor at run time. The new variable X come into a memory which hole the modify value in it.  

Important note- It is not necessary programming language only follow the one paradigm. Programming language follow may be follow more then one paradigm. For example-
Java follow object oriented programming paradigm, statically typed paradigm, strong typed paradigm. 

  

Thank you. 

                   If you have any suggestion for improvement or found mistake or if you 

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