[mrinterweb]

I had a good background in C++ programming before switching to ruby. At first, I was terrified of the lack of strict typing, but after using it for a while, I realized my concern wasn't that warranted. For me it is about the tradeoff of dealing with types vs productivity. Sure I occasionally get bit by a random "method not defined for nil" error, but it is usually very easy to fix, and I don't run into the issue very often. With ruby, and especially rails, it is about the productivity gains. I can simply accomplish much more in less time and fewer lines of code than I would in other languages/frameworks. Not only am I writing fewer lines of code (usually), the language is very expressive without being overly cryptic. The code is more readable, and to me that results in better maintainability. The strong community and ecosystem emphasis that is put on testing, also leads to more resilient and much more maintainable code.

[const_cast]

I disagree, I think weak typing significantly lowers developer productivity. Because your IDE gets lobotomized. Types aren't just for people, they're for programs. If I can't go to definition or go through the control flow that's a problem to me. I program in PHP - I get it. I have to live in the debugger because my IDE is worthless when I'm using bespoke arrays for everything.

Also, most statically typed languages have very robust type inference. If you don't like writing types that's fine - the language can just infer them 95% of the time. A lot of times you can open up a C# file and find next to no types explicitly written. But if you hover over something in your IDE, you can see the type.