Maybe to comic book readers
You say that like reading comic books is an anti-intellectual crime.
Getting to the point, look at these examples and tell me which one is better from the readability perspective.
> for(std::vector<std::shared_ptr<MyClass> >::const_iterator it = v.begin(); it != v.end(); ++it)
or
> for(const auto &value : v)
Even in the case when the "value" variable's inferred type isn't apparent from the context, we can use
> for(const std::shared_ptr<MyClass> &value : v)
which is still much more readable than the monstrosity in the first example.
I completely agree with that. For example, static typing adds verbosity, but it also documents the program and makes figuring out a large codebase a lot easier. The "noise" can even be reduced in languages with type inference like D, Haskell or C++11.
The thing is, unnecessary verbosity only crowds the code and doesn't add any value. Most of the keywords in "if ... then begin ... end else begin ... end" serve no real purpose and could be replaced with a symbol, like a curly brace.
if
...
else
...
end
I used to be a strong believer in static typing and insist that dynamic typing would be extremely error prone, but when I actually tried it, I found that the additional testing required is pretty much non-existent - if you test properly, you tend to cover types as a side effect.
I'd still prefer static typing, but only if it doesn't get in the way. And that means minimal annotations, and minimal restrictions.