Common Lisp was on the right track with gradual typing and decent inference, which makes a nice compromise compared to jumping static hoops to wrap the problem

Common Lisp was on the right track with gradual typing and decent inference, which makes a nice compromise compared to jumping static hoops to wrap the problem around a more rigid language. The type declaration syntax definitely could use some love, I think it's a shame a more convenient syntax was never standardized. And sum types etc would be nice of course. It's all perfectly possible.