Much of the discussion surrounding dynamic vs. static typed languages involves developer productivity. How long it takes to go from the mind to the code to figuring out if what you just did worked on not. Ben Jackson puts these thoughts into greater perspective with the addition of some numbers.
I've gone off on a bit of a rant here, but I'll sum it up by saying this: invest in hardware, invest in your build process, and don't be a slave to the machine. Your projects, and your sanity, are worth it.
The idea that compilation adds up to so much of your time is an effective argument in support of the move to more dynamic languages. The ability to save a change in my editor and then reload a page to see my changes makes the compile/redeploy process in the Java world seem archaic.
I'm not the guru when it comes to types and languages but I can recognize that it feels like the code comes out faster in Python or Ruby and generally the code is easier to read and maintain.
Posted by Josh at October 22, 2005 12:09 AM