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Well, despite what we tell ourselves, I think that most code we write is actually short lived. As in, it is only used for a short time. It might be in a zombie state for many years and even be revived, if it's an Open Source project, but that's not the common scenario.

As a result, if most of the code written by most programmers is short lived and during that short life changes drastically, super-strict languages actually slow you down a lot.

The real problem is: sometimes certain parts of our code live very long and intense lives. But we never know which parts and at which moments. If we knew, we'd just write those parts in Rust/Haskell and the rest in Javascript or Visual Basic and live merrily ever after.

To paraphrase P.T. Barnum: I know that 10% of my code needs to be extremely fast, easy to refactor and readable, I just don't know which 10% :D




I agree with most of that, but I find that when my code is changing drastically is when I get the most help from my type checking, and find it most conspicuously absent when I use "less strict" languages.

I've no doubt this depends on context, on habits and approach, on skill with the languages in question, and on skill with effectively using static typing in general, so I'm not surprised that others' experiences differ.


well said thanks! probably what i might have said if i had more eloquent wording :D




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