[blacktriangle]

I feel like there's a missing axis in the static/dynamic debate: the language's information model.

In an OOP language, types are hugely important, because the types let you know the object's ad-hoc API. OOP types are incredibly complicated.

In lisps, and Clojure in particular, your information model is scalars, lists, and maps. These are fully generic structures whose API is the standard Clojure lib. This means that its both far easier to keep the flow of data through your program in your head.

This gives you a 2x2 matrix to sort languages into, static vs dynamic, and OOP vs value based.

* OOP x static works thanks to awesome IDE tooling enabled by static typing

* value x static works due to powerful type systems

* value x dynamic works due to powerful generic APIs

* OOP x dynamic is a dumpster fire of trying to figure out what object you're dealing with at any given time (looking right at you Python and Ruby)

[pjmlp]

Smalltalk is "OOP x dynamic".

CLOS is "OOP x dynamic".

Common Lisp has arrays, structures and stack allocation.

IDE were invented from Smalltalk and Lisp development experience.

[blacktriangle]

CLOS is wierd since it sits in a multiparadigm language, so CL really spans boxes. JS is the same as well depending on how you use it. Smalltalk is a great example since it really did manage to do OOP x dynamic in a much better way and its worth wondering why Smalltalk pulled it off where Ruby feels like a nightmare. I suspect it has to do with focusing on the message passing aspect.

So no, it's not a perfect model, but I think its more informative than looking at languages on a one dimensional static / dynamic axis.