My first big love in languages was Turbo Pascal, because, it was the first one I learned. So many people do this, fall in love with the first language they understand.

My second big love in languages was Python. It's also the language in which I wrote my first major software product. It was this product that taught me to hate Python. Not because it was hard to create, or because quality was low. In fact, I was VERY FAST to produce 1.0. Took about a week. But after that, I had to work with other developers. That's where everything went to hell.

Then I got a new job a few months later where almost 100% of my time was spent doing maintenance on aging codebases written in Java, a language I never worked with before then. I won't say I fell in love with Java, but, I did fall in love with the ease of inspecting "the world" in each project. As soon as I had it setup in my IDE properly, it was so ridiculously easy to explore how everything related, and then to make refactoring changes? So much easier than it ever was in Python.

Now, at that point I didn't directly make the connection with the type system, but, in retrospect, I know that all of the value I derived from working in Java vs. Python came from having a descriptive, static type system. And frankly, I never once felt slowed down by the need to specify my types up front. In fact, the opposite is true. It taught me to put more thought into my data structures and vastly improved the quality of my software design before I even started writing logic.

Sadly now I'm moving into the data science/data engineering field and everything is Python and I don't know. I don't want to go back to this nightmare. It's like I spent the last decade in first class establishments with the best tools and now I'm going to have to work in the mud with sticks and shovels. I am interested in the field in terms of the capabilities it enables, and I have no problems working in Scala or whatever decently typed language is around, but, the reality is the lion's share of people in this field are doing everything in Python or R and I hate them both.

I figure I have two choices: help advance the capabilities of "better" platforms, or pursue some other direction in my career. It's too hard to know how much better life can be, then go back.