[giantrobot]

I have had the exact same experience. There's lots of utility in statically typed languages. They're great if your problem space is well defined. With respect to type checking, it's like a jig in wood or metal working. You trade flexibility for correctness.

When the problem space is less well defined the type-related boiler plate adds a lot of friction. It's not impossible to overcome that friction but it slows down progress. When you're under a tight deadline development velocity is often more valuable than absolute correctness or even overall runtime efficiency.

An delivered product that works is usually more valuable than an undelivered product that's more "correct" or efficient. A development project is just a cost (for various values of cost) until it ships.

[wpietri]

Definitely. And for me the early stages of a product are often about buying information. "Users say they want X, so let's ship X and see." Key to exploring a product space is tight feedback loops between having an idea and seeing what people really do. It's only once I have enough active users (especially active paying users) to justify the project that I have some confidence about what "long term" really means for the code base.

[garethrowlands]

"type-related boiler plate"

That phrase makes me sad. Mainstream languages have a lot of scope for improvement in their type systems.