The line gets blurred between type systems.Traditionaly strong and static typed languages seem to find it increasingly difficult to cope with evolving requirements.(this is my opinion)

C# seems to acknowledge this fact: first came generics, then type inference (used extensively by Linq where a lot of times you cannot use explicitly typing,so you let the compiler decide) and now a new dynamic(!) type is about to be introduced.

Here is an article about it C# 4.0 goes dynamic - a step too far? which gives insight on the forthcoming C# 4.0. I do not see it as just a 'C#' article but as sign of the times and the battle between type systems

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Re: C# 4.0 goes dynamic - a step too far?
by John M. Dlugosz (Monsignor) on May 18, 2009 at 19:50 UTC
    I've used C# version 2 I think (no generics), and found it to be the worst of strong and weak typing. You have to cast everything and introspection is difficult. It was not at all well thought out, and shows signs of repeating the sins of the past.

    However you must have had the thought “why do I need to cast the object to the correct type? – either the method call works or doesn’t work at run-time”. Apart from making it easier to discover the programmer’s intention the cast does absolutely nothing to protect you from an error at compile time – any problems only become apparent at runtime.
    That's a starting point.

    The issues they are discovering for dynamic vs. static type in the dispatch is something to be well thought through for Perl 6. It's been done before, all the way back to CLOS in Common Lisp. So learn from that!

    The interaction between static typing and dynamic dispatching seems to be under-appreciated in the Perl 6 community. Most people seem to proceed as if it's purely dynamic.

    —John

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