[yogthos]

Yeah, I definitely think that the functional style coupled with immutability plays a huge factor.

However, I'm not referring to writing shorter functions in that comment, but rather about higher level components like namespaces.

Refactoring becomes painful when a particular piece of data is used in many parts of the application. When you change the shape of that data, then you have to make sure you update every place that uses it. This is where static typing can help ensure that you didn't miss anything in your refactoring.