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I think dynamically typed languages represent a kind of history of thought about programming, while statically typed languages have developed largely along their own path. Dynamically typed languages declared victory over "types" decades ago. That hardly signaled the end of language development, it was just one of many decisions made by a group of practitioners. Purely along the axis of dynamic-or-not you can make a bunch of arguments, speculate that a statically typed language can meet any particular feature or benefit a dynamic language has, etc.; but those statically typed languages have had an opportunity cost, and the opportunity they missed wasn't one of types but of all the other aspects of software development -- because in any community of practitioners people will hit a wall, it's just what wall, and how they get past it. I personally think people using dynamically typed languages have spent their time banging their head against more interesting walls.



I personally think people using dynamically typed languages have spent their time banging their head against more interesting walls.

I'd agree but I think that's because designing a static typing system rigid enough to be useful but flexible enough to be expressive is a lot harder than building a dynamic language. That doesn't mean though that there's nothing to be gained from that hard work. It took a long time to design operating systems that allowed truly robust, compartmentalized multitasking too, but they clearly turned out to be superior for most things in the end.

My instinct is that we're going to see a return of static typing at the cutting edge of production coding but I'm not sure if this current crop of options is going to effect this. Scala seems to me to be the only one with a shot at the mainstream for this round.




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