Dynamic Languages Strike Back (2008)
I remember this post from the time and I&#x27;m glad we&#x27;ve come so far since then.<p>It turns out the reason static typing seemed like a pain at the time is because we didn&#x27;t have good tools. You&#x27;d write code for a while, then you&#x27;d run the compiler, and UGH there&#x27;s all these errors to go back through and fix.<p>Now that my IDE highlights the errors as I go, not to mention has good auto-complete and jump-to-definition, I am much more productive in a statically-typed language than a dynamic one.<p>Interestingly there are still areas where most people seem to prefer dynamic typing: service APIs. JSON everywhere. Is it because JSON is actually better, or is it because we don&#x27;t yet have good enough tools for schema-driven APIs (e.g. Protobuf, Cap&#x27;n Proto, etc.)? If we had those tools, would schema-driven APIs be widely seen as being more productive? (I suspect so but I am perhaps biased.)