David Heinemeier Hansson

The shorter the faith, the brighter the flame. I'm unashamedly a dynamic typing kind of guy. To me, Ruby with explicit, static typing would be like a salad with a scoop of ice cream. It takes full advantage of dynamic typing to allow the poetic syntax that results in such beautiful code.

Programming types and mindsets

I really enjoy the analogies in this piece. Convincing an introvert that he / she would “love parties” if they were to just “loosen up” or convincing the extrovert that they would love sitting on the top of a mountain and journaling for 4 hours … both of these endeavors are futile. And I do agree that arguing about static vs dynamic typing will get you to the same place with people.
I will say that I happen to be one of those people who “switched”. I used to love dynamic typing and now after doing a lot of Typescript and Angular, I just don’t respect dynamic typing as much anymore. I won’t go into the “reasons” because we’ve all heard them all before and it turns into the same circular narrative.
I will say that as programming becomes more and more of a social endeavor and “not about me” anymore but about teams and collaboration, I tend to gravitate toward frameworks and languages where my INTENTION behind what I’m writing is communicated very well.
This is actually one of the things I love about Rails … the culture and the framework has conventions so that anyone in the Rails ecosystem is part of this culture and things just kind of “click” around that mutual understanding. What I like about Typescript, though , is that those understandings are built right into the language itself. Just a preference.
But yes, coming back into Rails now this year, it’s reminding me of what I really love about that framework and the beauty / poetry of it all. So in that sense I think Rails and Ruby together do have a poetic flow that is somewhat right-brained and hard to explain to the rigid world of the statically typed person. Poetry is not always straight forward but somehow it always flows together in the end.

I’m too dumb to use dynamic programming languages 😭
Dynamic programming languages push all the work of ensuring the program is valid onto me. Its too much for my smooth brain 😭 I need the help of a compiler or static analysis tool to save me from myself.

Is there a group out there that enjoys both? I like writing in JavaScript because it allows to get up and go without micromanaging me.
However, I do enjoy writing in C# and can debug much faster due to it’s static nature.
I guess if you’re on either side of the spectrum you are going to be more vocal than those of us who enjoy both.

I could never return to static typing. Not from a like or a dislike of styles perspective… . Just from the use of my most valuable resource… My time. I spend almost no time in a year chasing type related issues, so why would I give up the precious hours I have to waste time statically typing everything for absolutely no return.