My experience with modern statically typed languages have been primarily with ML and OCaml. While they have a lot of advantages over neanderthal languages like

My experience with modern statically typed languages have been primarily with ML and OCaml. While they have a lot of advantages over neanderthal languages like C, and it's great that once you've gotten your program to compile, whole classes of bugs will be virtually impossible, I much prefer programming in Scheme. With ML and OCaml, I really hated spending hours wrestling with the compiler and puzzling over obscure error messages that seem to require taking college level courses in type theory in order to understand. In comparison, programming in Scheme (and even Common Lisp) is incredibly quick and easy, and a real joy. True, when I need maximal robustness, I do wind up spending a lot more time writing unit tests in Scheme than I would in ML or OCaml. But for rapid prototyping and programming as I think, Scheme is very hard to beat.