A great piece.

Unfortunately, it's somewhat of a religious argument about the one true way. I've worked on both sides of the fence, and each field is equally green in its own way. I've use OCaml, with static typing, and Clojure, with maybe-opt-in schema checking. They both work fine for real purposes.

The big problem arrives when you mix metaphors. With typing, you're either in, or you're out - or should be. You ought not to fall between stools. Each point of view works fine, approached in the right way, but don't pretend one thing is the other.