Earlier this week, I was browsing a programming forum and saw two fellows arguing about the definitions of “strong” and “weak” typing. One of the fellows argued that Python has a “strong” type system, because every object has a type, and that C has a “weak” type system because the programmer can circumvent the type system by casting. The other argued that this definition deviated from the original definition of “strong” typing in that a program with “strong” types will not run unless the program satisfies a set of constraints determined by a typechecker, and that by this definition, C would be “strongly typed” and Python would be “weakly typed”.

“Alas,” a third fellow chimed in, “‘strongly typed’ and ‘weakly typed’ are not rigorously defined academic terms,” and then linked to this wikipedia page.

“Shut up nerd,” the original fellow responded. The second fellow concurred, “I agree with you, but I agree with OP that you are a nerd and should shut up.”

Definitions are hard. The task of defining a term, such that it is consistently used in an unambiguous manner is hard. Difficult. A struggle. Tough stuff. You get it.

As such, I propose a piece of new unambiguous terminology that can be used to denigrate programming languages that you dislike. The set of all programming languages can be split into two disjoint sets: “nerdly typed” and “stupidly typed” languages. Given the following example:

function main() {
    print("Hello from a stupid programming language!")
    im_stupid()
}

A language implementation must be considered “stupidly typed” if its closest equivalent to the above pseudocode would print “Hello from a stupid programming language!” before printing out any other text. If a language satisfies this property, it is a stupid language, and if you use it you are probably an idiot. If it does not, then you are programming in a language for nerds, and you are probably a loser that doesn’t have any friends.

Now I know what you’re thinking. What if a language has a builtin im_stupid() function? I’m sorry, but by the canonical definition, it is a stupidly typed programming language. And even worse, you’re a nerd for being so pedantic.