Not having this flame war. I have my reasons, you have yours. We will continue writing code using our separate ways. Certain patterns are awkward or even impossible in statically typed languages and you need to bypass the type system to get things done so implicit or not, static type systems have a cost. There is a benefit as well but the kinds of systems I work on I don't need the extra validation. I need the ability to quickly prototype and ship and then layer on the validation, hence the need for optional types.