On Monday 10 December 2001 4:56 pm, you wrote:

> Spending most of my development time in Java, and
> having spent a considerable amount of time in
> dynamicly typed languages like Python, Smalltalk, and
> Ruby, I've found that statically typed languages just
> get in my way.  I personally think that the safety
> benefits are a myth, or at the very least overrated.
> Just look at the collection hierarchy in Java2.
>
> Iterator iter = someList.iterator();
> while (iter.hasNext()) {
>     MyType o = (MyType) o.next();
>     o.doSumphin();
>     // or even uglier
>     ((MyType)o.next()).doSumphin();
>
> }
>
> All of this type checking is done at runtime, and the
> code is just plain hideous to look at, which does
> matter to me.  If I want to do anything as general as
> a collection, I have to pass Object around, then cast
> to the appropriate type as needed.  It appears to me
> that I lose the benefits of compile time type
> checking.

This is a drawback of the lack of templates in Java, not
a drawback of static typing.

Rik