Are the critiques in "All the things I hate about Python" valid?

[Chris Angelico]

On Sat, Feb 17, 2018 at 10:28 PM, Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet at bsb.me.uk> wrote:
> Marko Rauhamaa <marko at pacujo.net> writes:
> <snip>
>> Many people think static typing is key to high quality. I tend to think
>> the reverse is true: the boilerplate of static typing hampers
>> expressivity so much that, on the net, quality suffers.
>
> I don't find that with Haskell.  It's statically typed but the types are
> almost always inferred.  If you see an explicit type, it's usually
> because the author thinks it helps explain something.
>
> (I don't want to start a Haskell/Python thread -- the only point is that
> static typing does not inevitably imply lots of 'boilerplate'.)
>

Which goes to show just how misunderstood terms like "static typing"
are. I wonder, is "static vs dynamic typing" on par with "call by
reference vs call by value" in the way people pigeon-hole every
programming language, not understanding that it's not a dichotomy?

ChrisA