[pphysch]

>> Strict types are a great way to paint yourself into a corner.

> I've never really understood this stance. It's all code. It's not like you can't change it later.

Try maintaining a poorly designed relational database. For example, I am dealing with a legacy database where someone tacked on an innocent "boolean" column to classify two different types of records. Then years later they decided that it wasn't actually boolean and now that column is 9-valued. And that's how you get nonsense like "is_red=6 means is_green". Good luck tearing the entire system apart to refactor that (foreseeable) typing/modeling error. The economical path is usually to add to the existing mess, "is_red=10 means is_pink".

[wtetzner]

And if this was an untyped blob of JSON it would somehow be better?

I'd argue that dynamic typing makes it easier to paint yourself into a corner.

[marcosdumay]

The stuff you are complaining about is caused exactly by lack of type strictness.

Nobody fixes it because nobody has any idea on what code depends on that column. With strict types you just ask the computer what code depends on it, and get a list a few minutes later.