Users of the Smalltalk browser will be surprised to learn that Smalltalk has static typing.

Then again, users of Eclipse may be surprised to learn that many of its features came from VisualAge for Smalltalk.

On the gripping hand, anyone well-versed in programming language design won't be surprised to learn of the research (from Strongtalk, I believe) which suggests that at least 90% of a program written in a dynamic language is almost trivially statically decidable.

The moral of the story is: distrust people who make sweeping pronouncements without having done their homework.

When you don’t have static typing, what you really miss the most is the ability to make data-type related assertions and to do so at compile time.   But there are many ways to implement that, which do not unduly restrict your flexibility in handling data at run time.

At run time, the notion that “a piece of data is a self-describing object” really is convenient, and it really is efficient.   Sometimes much more convenient than the static-typing of the days of yore, when computers were much slower and smaller and “you did what you had to do in the very-tiny shoebox that you had.”

Or more simply:   “distrust people who make sweeping pronouncements.”   (Especially if they have the capacity to assign homework.)

I also have learned to be skeptical about words like “automatic” in almost any computer related discussion.   The term implies “intelligence” or “reasoning,” when in fact the only process that a digital computer is capable of is the execution of an algorithm.   The actual, pragmatic usefulness of the notion is much less than what has been hyped.   (Pity.)

Heh.   You’ve seen the joke, somewhere on YouTube I am sure ... first field-test of a bionic arm ... (insert Three Stooges clip here) ... “Let’s go.   No, wait!   Wait!   Wait!!   Aaargh!!   Turn it off!   Turn it off!!”

:-D   Automation isn’t everything.

It certainly is a useful concept.   I know it extremely well and am fond of it myself.   It greatly increases the capacity of the compiler to generate warning and error-messages at compile time.   But the hype is hyperbole.