I'm not sure you can realistically wire together pieces of functionality written in a statically typed language without understanding its underlying type system

I'm not sure you can realistically wire together pieces of functionality written in a statically typed language without understanding its underlying type system. Sure, by the time it compiles without errors the code probably needs less debugging than in a dynamically-typed language, but getting to that point can be difficult and frustrating. (Speaking from experience as a TA.)