This article has done rounds on the ITernet before. Maybe because it resonates with people (who repost it time and again). Anyway, I very much agree with the idea. In my experience, "text" or "string" is not a type. Technically it is one, of course, but I seldom see good use of it for when a more apt type would do better -- in short, it's a last resort thing, and it fares badly there too. Ironically, the only good use for it is as input to a... parser.

I see a lot of URLs being passed around as strings within a system perfectly capable of leveraging typing theory and offering user defined types, if not at least through OOP goodness a lot of people would furiously defend. The URL, in this case, would often have _already_ been parsed once, but effectively "unparsed" and keeps being sent around as text in need of parsing at every "junction" of the system that requires to meaningfully access it, except that parsing is approached like some ungodly litany best avoided and thus foregone or lazily implemented with a regex where a regex isn't nearly sufficient. Perhaps it's because we lack parsers, by and large, or in the very least parser generators that are readily available, understandable (to your average developer), and simple enough to use without requiring to understand formal language theory with Chomsky hierarchy, context sensitivity, grammar ambiguity and parse forests, to say the least.

Same with [file] paths, HTTP header values, and other things that seem alluring to dismiss as only being text.

It wouldn't be a problem, had I not seen time and again how the "text" breaks -- URLs with malformed query parameters because why not just do `+ '?' + entries.map(([ name, value ]) => name + "=" + value).join("&")`, how hard can it be? Paths that assume leading slash or lack there of etc.

I believe the article was born precisely of the same class of frustrations. So I am now bringing the same mantra everywhere with me: "There is no such type as string". Parse at earliest opportunity, lazily if the language allows it (most languages do) -- breadth first so as to not pay upfront, just don't let the text slip through.

I am talking from experience, really, your mileage may vary.