I suspect the latter. The static typing crowd is moving towards type inference - you mentioned the obvious examples already. Now we're seeing dynamic languages

I suspect the latter. The static typing crowd is moving towards type inference - you mentioned the obvious examples already. Now we're seeing dynamic languages evolving towards static typing with inference. I think that most people if they really think deeply about it would say that all things being equal that static typing is a good thing. The problem is that all things are not equal and that the cost of extra syntax, boilerplate, etc can completely outweigh the benefits of of that static typing (as the GP post clearly believes). I was a huge dynamic language fan until I started using Scala full time and since then I've gone completely the other direction to being a static fan. I suspect as more people start finding their way to tools which provide static typing guarantees without the syntax getting in their way so much that we'll find a nice middle ground.