I've never bought the idea that the opposite is a better trade off because it comes with costs too. Have you ever worked with a bunch of mediocre java programers? Heaven forbid they make an interface that isn't well thought out and needs to be changed later!
if ruby is an extreme to the left, and java an extreme to the right, then python is also extreme to the left. The difference between python and ruby in dynamicity is really small.
Python is not in the middle of ruby and java. Python is virtually on top of ruby.
A fair point. Maybe 'optimum' would be a more useful concept here than 'centre'... I see Python's position on the dynamicity (ugh) spectrum is in line with it's philosophy on readability.
(On a side note - your definition of 'extreme' rather depends on what outliers you have. I do love it when the US media refers to the Democrats as 'left of center' ;)
On a serious note, I've been doing ruby as my job for about 5 years and I work at a giant corporation with a few hundred programmers. In those 5 years I've never been bitten by someone changing a core class that breaks my code. Maybe 3 times I've been bitten by someone changing a non core class, and it usually takes me about an hour or two to resolve it.
So that's maybe 6 hours in 5 years where I've lost time due to this, but the amount of time it has saved me is far larger than this.
