[pron]

Right, but an important point here is "some highly dynamic language features make analysis really imprecise or really hard". Not all "late bindings" are born equal. JavaScript's dispatch is very different from Java's from a static analysis perspective, the latter being almost indistinguishable from pattern matching.

[maemre]

I totally agree with that. When I mentioned dynamic dispatch, I had something like Scheme or JavaScript in my mind. Dynamic dispatch in those languages require a more subtle analysis to obtain precise results. I wish I could edit my parent comment to clarify my example.

To clarify my position (hence my parent comment's point) on this general matter, I'm OK with any language feature that is amenable to static analysis in a practical amount of time. This puts me closer to PL conservatives in Steve Yegge's spectrum.

[zimablue]

I think the standard counterargument is that if unit testing is ubiquitous, we're already admitting static analysis is at best very incomplete.

[pron]

I think some guys actually proved that in the 1930s. But so what? Program analysis and testing complement one another.