I began coding in in Python primarily where there is no type safety, then moved to C# and Java where there is. I found that I could work a bit more quickly and with less headaches in Python, but then again, my C# and Java apps are at much higher level of complexity so I have never given Python a true stress test I suppose. 

The Java and C# camps make it sound like without the type safety in place, most people would be running into all sorts of horrible bugs left an right and it would be more trouble than its worth. 

This is not a language comparison, so please do not address issues like compiled vs interpreted. Is type safety worth the hit to speed of development and flexibilty? WHY?

to the people who wanted an example of the opinion that dynamic typing is faster:


  "Use a dynamically typed language during development. It gives you faster feedback, turn-around time, and development speed." -
     http://blog.jayway.com/2010/04/14/static-typing-is-the-root-of-all-evil/


It's sort of a myth that programmers don't have to worry about types in dynamically typed languages.  

In dynamically typed languages:


You still have to know if you're working with an array, an integer, a string, a hash table, a function reference, a dictionary, an object, or whatever.  
If it's an object, you have to know what class it belongs to.  
Assigning one of these types to a variable or function parameter expected to be another type is almost always an error.  
At a lower level, things like number of bits or signed versus unsigned frequently still must be accounted for if you are populating a TCP packet, for example.  
You can run into problems where you get a zero where you really wanted an empty string.  In other words, you're still debugging type mismatch bugs.  The only real difference is the compiler isn't catching the errors.
I'd argue that you aren't even saving much typing- , because you tend to want to document in comments what type your function parameters are instead of documenting it in your code.  This is why doxygen-style comment blocks are much more popular in practice throughout dynamically typed code, where in statically typed languages you mostly only see them for libraries.


That's not to say that programming in dynamically typed languages doesn't feel more pleasant because the compiler isn't always on your back, and experienced programmers don't tend to have difficulty finding and correcting the kind of bugs that static typing would catch anyway, but that's a completely separate issue from an alleged increase in efficiency or reduction in bug rate, for which dynamic typing is at best even with static typing.
