[baddox]

This is an impressive and informative argument. It's a shame that it's aimed at a straw man.

I use the term "dynamic language" to refer to a well-recognized (though not perfectly agreed upon) set of languages. I didn't choose the term "dynamic," and I've never tried to argue that since they're dynamic, they're better/more fun/more expressive than non-dynamic languages. Hence the straw man.

I use the term simply to distinguish between, say, the set {Java, C, C++} and the set {Python, JavaScript, Ruby}. Most people are aware of this usage and immediately understand the distinction. You could call the latter set "cranberry languages" instead of "dynamic languages" and it would be okay. As long as everyone understands the usage, it's a functional (no programming language pun intended) term.

[regularfry]

It's not so much a straw man as it is a misnomer. What he's calling a "dynamic language," I (and I think most others) would call a "dynamically typed language." It's possible to have a dynamically typed, static language - with the dynamic keyword, that's what C# is, for example.

[baddox]

I try to avoid any discussion of "typing" when I comes to programming languages because I recognize both my own ignorance in the nitty gritty of language design and the general lack of consensus in the meaning of "x typing" terminology.