> "Dynamically typed" is a contradiction in terms, at least if one is using the standard technical definition of the word "type". These languages offer runtime

> "Dynamically typed" is a contradiction in terms, at least if one is using the standard technical definition of the word "type". These languages offer runtime checks that have some things in common with a type system (in particular they have some of the same use cases), but they are not types and it is confusing to call them types (even if everyone in computer science agreed to talk about "dynamic types" and "static types" that would still cause confusion, because "static types" are types in the mathematical sense and "dynamic types" are not). That is complete nonsense. Dynamically typed languages have types (many even treat them as first-class objects) and primitive expressions with types assigned to those expressions. What dynamically typed languages let you do is construct and evaluate terms that cannot be typed. > You have reader macros but that's basically just having a program that operates on text strings, which you can do in any language - you can write a C program that preprocesses C source and it's effectively the same thing This argument boils down to "you can write a huge compiler in any language you want! it's easy!" There is actually a Lisp meme about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule > I'd rather have my program expressed as a richer structure, and a language that's powerful enough to manipulate rich structures in a structure-aware way. You are confusing program syntax with parse trees. All parse trees look the same ("here is a graph of your program"). You can keep things simple and have a syntax that is context-free, has an obvious mapping to the parse tree, has an obvious interpretation, and has tons of tooling support in hundreds of different tools and editors. Or you can decide that you really really like your whitespace to be very emo and sensitive - just write your own context sensitive parser, roll your own tooling, force everyone to learn it! It's easy!