Ask HN: Do you find static typing inconvenient?

[alexnye]

Coming from dynamic languages myself, with runtime metaprogramming, I'm going to recommend my work experiment with TypeScript.

How has static typing restricted your choice of programming patterns? How have things become more awkward or contrived?

[sidlls]

In the last several years I've programmed mainly in C++ and python. The differences couldn't be more clear. I find dynamic languages impose a lot of overhead in terms of tooling and additional test code to account for the dynamic type system. Often it seems like a poorly spec'd static type system that is specific to the problem domain is implemented in tests, for one.

The range of programming patters isn't really restricted in any meaningful way. It may require more up-front effort, but it pays off.

In fact I'm attempting to get my team off of python and onto something else with static typing. It's the ML space, so likely we'll consider C++ or Scala. Possibly go for some of the infrastructure code would be a consideration as well.