> So it's more effort to write the code to the point that it will compile/run at all. But once you've done that you're usually basically done.

Not if I don't know what I'm doing because it's something new. The way I'm learning how to do it is by building it. So I want to build it quickly so that I can get in more feedback loops as I learn. Also I want to learn by example, so I actually want to get runtime errors, not type system errors. Later when I do know what I am doing then, sure, I want to encode as much as I can in my types. But before that .. Don't get in my way!

Yeah it is a fair point that runtime errors are sometimes easier to understand than compile time errors. They're still a much worse option of course - for the many reasons that have been already discussed - but maybe compile-time errors could be improved by providing an example of the kind of runtime error you could get if you didn't fix it (and it hypothetically was dynamically typed). Perhaps that would be easier to understand for some people or some errors.

There's a (Curry-Howard) analogue here with formal verification and counter-examples.