An interesting consequence, if Mars was indeed solid gold and it was economical to bring back the gold: eventually [in fact, probably very quickly] an equilibrium would be reached, as rocket fuel prices went up and gold prices went down. Ultimately this would be quite a loss for humanity, since the value of gold is something of a popular delusion, while the value of rocket fuel is more in the nature of objective physical fact.

However: even simple typos like

foo.baar() // should be one a only ...

get compiled by dynamic languages and lead to an runtime error: method baar() not found! I make such typos in the hundrets a day, if I was forced to use languages like python I would hang myself.

http://www.google.com/search?q="used only once: possible typo at"

I have seen little evidence that static typing is all that useful in a general purpose programming language.

Static typing means that the compiler knows the type of every value. This allows the compiler to produce faster code. In particular, it allows the compiler to avoid a layer of indirection through a pointer. By contrast, in traditional implementations of LISP, all variables except integers are represented as pointers: that is why LISP is (or is reputed to be) slow. Moreover, the type of the value (even integer values) is represented in the data, and must be checked. The more information the compiler has about typing, the more of those pointers and checks can be eliminated, thus the less code and less memory access is necessary to get data into a register. In the ideal case, the data is put into a register directly through the assembly produced by the compiler. That's going to happen all the time with C; it won't happen in a dynamically typed language unless a lot of work has gone into optimizations (meaning, generally, "whole program analysis") or the programmer specifies additional type information for the compiler.

So, the point of static typing is not to help you, the programmer; it is to help your compiler.

The problem is that 90% of people who consider themselves "introverts" are actually just nerds with no social skills. The reason they don't enjoy interaction with others is because they're not any good at it. The cure for this, of course, is to go out, socialize, meet people, and develop their social skills.

No, the "cure" is to learn social skills during childhood and adolescence, like everyone else. Those are the times when one is emerged in [at least the institutionalized simulacrum of] actual society. To enter the crowd of strangers and "meet people" is a task requiring social skills -- rather advanced ones (viz., the "cold approach"), well beyond mere "extroversion" -- it is a poor way to acquire social skills.

But, hey, I don't want to discourage anyone. You might get lucky. It's just the responsibilization that bothers me. General principle: people don't have problems with easy solutions that they don't implement because they are stubborn and foolish; that's just a way of blaming them for their problems (while putting on the pretense that you don't have them because you're superior).