[josephg]

I’ve swapped back and forth between static and dynamic types a few times in my career. Java and C/C++ to JavaScript (and coffeescript) to typescript and rust. The entire time (30 years at this point) I’ve felt like whatever I was doing at the time was obviously the one true way to program. I feel that now - that what I’ve been doing lately (static typing) is clearly superior. Even for throwaway JavaScript based projects at the moment the first thing I do is install typescript.

I’m spitballing on the reason - I don’t know why it’s like this. But maybe it’s because static typing encourages you to write & plan your types first. When you know the data types, all the functions kind of flow around your types and everything feels like it obviously flows from that. With dynamic typing, it’s the reverse. I find myself writing my functions first (top down or bottom up) and then backfilling what arguments and data everything needs to pass around. I run my code a lot more as I develop it to stop bugs creeping in. And because I can run my code at any time. There’s no type checker stopping me from trying things out.

[IggleSniggle]

I've recently found a great middle ground for this, using esbuild to drive code as I'm writing it, while my IDE may meanwhile be complaining that all my types are broken. Getting comfortable having "broken" types while something is still in development is a nice middle ground, helping you come back to the hot spots whenever you're ready, and acting as a forcing function prior to commit or push.