Why do you think type inference has gotten so popular.

You get to have both the safety and performance of static, without adding types all over the place! ^.^

OCaml is awesome for that.

It is more like striking a balance.
More and more people prefer a using dynamic type language for kickstarting a project.
As the project grows, they try to make use of the additional static type feature.

I hope they don’t. Also, good to see a good old Artima post, it’s been ages since I’ve been linked to one of those.