Seeing statically typed variants of Python such as ShedSkin or PyPy's RPython, I think that one major annoyance is gone. You still need polymorphism for some t

Seeing statically typed variants of Python such as ShedSkin or PyPy's RPython, I think that one major annoyance is gone. You still need polymorphism for some things, and having the possibility to have "implicit interfaces" (you just write x.foo() without declaring that x implements the foo interface, or that y and z also implement it - this is also useful when y or z are library classes you cannot change). Often, the type inference that is needed slows down the compile times quite a bit; and (both with Haskell and with C++) you get incomprehensible error messages when something is wrong but it could have gone wrong in half a dozen places. (C++: 6 lines with "in ...", then "no such method: foo", Haskell: expected type bla->foo->Z x, found a->B c->d) IMO, static type analysis on top of a dynamic language (e.g. PyDev) gives you most of the benefits of IDE and refactoring support - with the additional coolness that it can just skip the places that are not type-able. (Optional type declarations to put PyDev back on track in the most obvious cases would be great, though).