[justinsb]

I believe that strong typing is a much bigger factor than design patterns in supporting big codebases, and allowing people new to the codebase to contribute productively. Once you go beyond a small project, it's really nice to have the compiler on your side here!

In terms of the pool of total developers, the argument is that "A-grade" developers use Scala and/or Java, "B-grade" developers only use Java, so a Scala developer is rarer but more likely to be an A-grade developer. But of course, once this is known then the B-grade developers learn Scala. This is probably what happened to Ruby - it was little known, so all the Ruby developers were 10x. Now everyone learns Rails, and Rails + Ruby teams are rapidly reverting to the mean.

But yes, I do agree that we've figured out what good Java code looks like now, although it took us 10-15 years to do so. And we haven't hit the 10 year mark on Scala, Ruby, Clojure etc...

[cageface]

Once you go beyond a small project, it's really nice to have the compiler on your side here!

Absolutely. Mobile dev brought me back to compiled languages after a long stint in Ruby and the advantages of static typing for performance, correctness, and tooling are so overwhelming that I doubt I'll ever work in a dynamic language by choice again.