[dllthomas]

You seem to be under the impression that types are for late stage development. I find them indispensable early on. First, because they let me feel out where my assumptions conflict, often before I've gotten to writing the bit of code that will make it obvious. Second, because when my assumptions are wrong, the type checker is a tremendous help refactoring - telling me all the places my old code is incompatible with my new assumptions. Both of these mean I don't need to be quite as sure that I've got things exactly right as I start coding.