[stcredzero]

Either way, you end up keeping lots of things in your head. With dynamic langs, you do have to think about types and use them conservatively. With languages like Java -- the same. No toolset is going to work well unless the dev is on top of things and good at using the tool well.

I've found that debugging in a dynamic environment is great for managing types in a well architected system. It falls down in a poorly architected one, in ways that static typing would not ave allowed. However, in such systems, "it compiles so it must be correct," programmers just get stuck in deeper snow.

[eropple]

This is true, but I personally find that the tools available in decent statically/strongly-typed languages--C#, Scala--can do a fair amount in encouraging the Right Thing in ways that dynamically typed languages (especially dynamically weakly typed languages) can't.

I'm even becoming more and more fond of C++ because of the constraints that you can work in with proper use of templates; my only beef there is that the error messages when you do the Wrong Thing are often not conducive to understanding what the Right Thing is.