[forrestthewoods]

> So the faster (in the long run), "better" way is to first prototype with very loose types and find what works, and then lock it down, within the scope of the above paragraph

Disagree. You can still prototype and refactor with strict types. I don't find working with loose types to be faster at all. Once a program reaches non-trivial complexity loose types make iteration development significantly more difficult and error prone.