Impact of Using a Static-type System in Computer Programming*

Static-type systems are a major topic in programming language research and the software industry because they should reduce the development time and increase the code quality. Additionally, they are predicted to decrease the number of defects in a code due to early error detection. However, only a few empirical experiments exist on the potential benefits of static-type systems in programming activities. This paper describes an experiment that tests whether static-type systems help developers create solutions for certain programming tasks. The results indicate that although the existence of a static-type system has no positive impact when subjects code a program from scratch, it does allow more errors in program debugging to be fixed.