You can't learn this stuff by reading about it, you have to experience it. Some of your counter-arguments are outright confusing to those who have programmed i

You can't learn this stuff by reading about it, you have to experience it. Some of your counter-arguments are outright confusing to those who have programmed in languages with type inference (hint: they don't necessarily have classes). Experience may help you change your mind. Reading papers and advocacy from people who've used it should provide limited influence. As an aside, there are solutions to programming problems I would've never come up with if it weren't for experience in other programming languages, so I read "don't have time to learn a new programming language" as "don't have time because I haven't learned a new programming language."