Python is a strong dynamically typed language. Unlike JavaScript, which is a weak dynamically typed language. In Python `'1' + 0` throws a `TypeError`. While JavaScript attempts to figure out what you meant.
Which would be fine if I only ever used "+" with literals. But normally, I write things like
x + y
where x and y are values I got from who knows where. Javascript shouldn't pretend to figure out what I mean by this, because in many cases, I'm talking gibberish, and all I have is a bug.
I'd rather not talk about this stuff in terms of "types." It's about assertions, and Python makes them early and throws the exceptions early. It's a defensive practice that you can emulate in any language, and your assertions can be much richer than anything that is typically thought of as a type.
I'm definitely a fan of Python's strategy. It's much better at detecting bugs early and often. That, and there's a distinction in Python between identity and equality, with the `is` and `==` operators respectively.
Frankly, I think Perl has the best approach to this specific problem. We all want to do some string concatenation. We all want to render some non-string values as strings sometimes. So:
