[tel]

I think that personally that's the place that genericity and inference live. I never write types as concrete as

   'a . 'b -> 'b

but instead write code and let the inferencer tell me how general it might be then use that information to peel apart layers which don't need to be conflated.

This isn't tied to this example, of course. I think generally static types get misused the thought is that they don't let you experiment with code. I think that they don't let you experiment with code in the same way that dynamic types do, but I don't think they're at all impeded for that. It just takes investment into a different kind of experimentation.