As an undergrad, Python was my favorite language. Now it's one of my least favorite because of dynamic typing and the poor dependency management. Python dicts,

As an undergrad, Python was my favorite language. Now it's one of my least favorite because of dynamic typing and the poor dependency management. Python dicts, when used as composite types or records, are a literal hellscape. Grepping through the code to find out where stringly-keyed fields get written takes way more time than thinking about types ever would. These should be structs. Static typing has so many advantages: - It lowers the software defect rate. All type errors are caught for free at compile time instead of runtime. This makes the software strong and rigid instead of brittle, and it removes an entire category of tests you would have to write and maintain. - Static typing makes code maintainable for other people, including future you. It's self-documenting. You know precisely what things are in the immediate scope. - Static typing makes bug-free automated refactoring with tools possible. There is no greater pleasure than mutating code via its AST. Static typing is not hard, either. Most typed languages don't require type declarations except in structs and function declarations - that's really not a lot of effort.