[kazinator]

Static typing (and other static checks) will reduce the round trips between editing and running. Some of your typos that are not syntax errors get caught and reported to you. Of course, you were going to test that code anyway. But you avoided a bit of wasted time. However, this advantage can be eroded by the trade offs.

Interesting experience recently: I added static checks to a Lisp dialect which report warnings for all occurrences of unbound variables and functions. (Not type checking, but a very basic static check). According to static proponents, bugs of this type should exist left and right if we don't have the check.

Only one instance of an unbound variable was found in the dialect's standard library: and that was a function that was added as an afterthought and never tested. The problem reproduced 100% when calling the function in any correct manner whatsoever; the function was completely broken. If it had been called just once after having been written, the problem would have been caught.

I fixed the problem so that the warning went away and caught myself almost starting to think about commit the fix, when I realized: what am I doing? I still haven't called the function. Gee, it now passes the one feeble static check that was added, so it must be correct? Haha.