[bitwize]

Are you more productive according to the stopwatch? Or do you just feel more productive?

I believe that a strong static type system with generics is an unmitigated win, and that any time you think you may have lost fighting the compiler is more than regained by the time saved not having to track down type bugs at runtime, using the IDE to perform code completion and refactoring, etc. This effect is magnified as the project grows large.