For a related example, the BASIC programming language is great for programs that fit in 24 lines (which is how many lines a glass tty displayed).
It seems like all of the dynamically typed programming languages are pursuing (optional/gradual) static typing systems, and we've mostly moved on past "pure" dynamically typed PLs at this point. It's more about how-much and what-kind of static typing. And perhaps this depends upon your domain (e.g. Rust and its focus on memory safety while eschewing GC, which necessitates lifetime annotations).
0) I don't think type inference is a panacea. For example, it's not super helpful when you have a complex type system inferring crazy types for you, and you're stuck debugging them when the inferrer has failed.
Modern BASICs are suitable for writing larger programs.
Also seen today on HN:
"I Miss Visual Basic" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43988853
"The history and legacy of Visual Basic" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43949855
The 24 line thing was a limitation of the glass tty, not BASIC.
My point was that printing, teletype-style terminals don't have an intrinsic vertical space limit like video display terminals (and eventually the printouts can get quite long).
But now that I think about it, perhaps the designers of BASIC might have been thinking of making it easy for a beginner to spend an afternoon or two learning how to write something comparable to a short FORTRAN program that might fit on a small deck of 80 column (72 with sequence number) punched cards.