Try programming in Rust. The upfront cost in figuring out how to write the code to minimise unsafe()'s can be very high. This is because Rust's type system is

Try programming in Rust. The upfront cost in figuring out how to write the code to minimise unsafe()'s can be very high. This is because Rust's type system is so strong it both does the work of the garbage collector and catches things other languages would miss, like memory leaks. That aside, that "bit" of typing can amount to a lot. Python programs are usually very compact compared to statically typed languages. Yes, this means writing more unit tests to cover the bits the type checker would have caught, but in my experience the total LOC with unit tests for 100% coverage in Python is still less than a statically types language. That said, I still prefer statically types languages. The big difference between statically typing and unit tests is when the error is caught. Static typing catches the errors very early. In fact in modern IDE's that do incremental compiles it's literally after you have typed the statement. Errors that hang around tend to ripple through your code because your mental model is wrong, so catching them early means less errors in total. The effect can be large.