Is Uncle Bob wrong about TDD?

No.

The straw man: "to tell everyone else all these static type checks are useless."

The actual (from Uncle Bob's article):

"Now I don’t want you to think that I’m opposed to statically typed languages. I’m not. There are definite advantages to both dynamic and static languages; and I happily use both kinds"

"useless" vs. "definite advantages"

Reading helps.

Oh, and obligatory reference to The Refactoring Browser[1] for the common fallacy repeated in the linked article that static typing is necessary for refactoring:

"We originally thought that the lack of static type-checking would make it hard to build a refactoring browser for Smalltalk. Lack of type information is a disadvantage, but the advantages of Smalltalk made it a lot easier to make a refactoring browser for Smalltalk than it would have have been for C++ or Java."

The first automated refactoring tool was created in a language without static type information, and it certainly was and maybe still is the gold standard for such tools.

Knowing your history also helps.

[1] http://wiki.c2.com/?RefactoringBrowser

Uncle Bob's original article was full of ideas that are just plain wrong. After reading it, I would not bother reading anything written by that author again.

Stuff like:

> Whose job is it to manage the nulls. The language? Or the programmer?

is essentially like asking "Who's job is to provide instructions for the CPU" or "Who's job is to decide about how to allocate registers during software execution".

The responsibility of a programmer (or rather software engineer) is to provide as good as possible solution to a problem. It's definitely not required to do every piece of that solution manually. If there's a way to efficiently offload any job to a computer it should be used. It can be debatable if a given way is convenient, provides good enough results etc. but "who's job is it to (...)" is just silly argument.

People with the attitude like "when men where men and took care of their own NULLs manually" are just backward minded, and ignore the fact that NULL is a nasty hack, and even its creator regrets it.

Did the article change its title, or did you strongly editorialize your submission? Sound very click-baity. At the very least it should be something like "Is Uncle Bob wrong about TDD subverting need for strong typing?" to properly summarize the article. (still editorializing though, but a bit more accurate)

"there is no reason to have the programmer and his.." I automatically discount the word "professional" from anyone who can't speak or write in gender neutral language.

The answer to just about every question that begins with "Is Uncle Bob wrong about..." is yes.