This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: Static/Dynamic Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants

Here's a great line I spotted in comp.lang.smalltalk:

Just curious, but how many people out there using static languages actually try to pass invalid types to methods? How many Java users commonly get ClassCastExceptions at runtime?

My answers are:

• I never pass invalid types to methods.
• I have no memory of ever getting a ClassCastException in Java.

After using dynamic languages for a while I have come to the conclusion that static typing solves a problem that doesn't exist.

That's pretty much been my thinking for a long time now. Back when I was a C programmer, what static typing usually pointed out to me was things like "#$%^& this function expected a short, but I'm passing in an int". In other words, mostly irrelevant errors.