Kotlin Is Better
I've started to come around on a similar thought recently, after a few years avoiding static typing in python. I've been toying with C# specifically.C# with visual studio is, I think, the most productive environment I've come across in programming. It's ergonomically sound, straightforward, and the IDE protects me from all sorts of relevant errors. Steve mentioned Intellij is a bit slower than he'd hope typing sometimes. I totally agree with that. I think Visual Studio doesn't quite suffer from that (though I haven't worked on huge projects, and that may well affect it). My main problems with IDEs are twofold: for non-static languages like Python, they're just not very good. Sometimes they do exactly what you need, and 70% of the time they're just totally useless (which is a knock on the programming languages more than the IDEs). The zippiness on reaction to my typing is another huge deal. If it's anything other than instantaneous, then I notice my editor in a negative light. When you pair a tremendous IDE with a good language though, the productivity loss of typing becomes pretty much negligible, and the gains for all the other reasons start to become apparent.Changing one parameter or type on a class or function to refactor, and then just following the chain of compiler errors, reaching the end, and seeing that everything just works exactly how you want it to was a big eye opener to me.Definitely going to give kotlin a go some time as well.