Statically vs. Dynamically Typed Languages

Static Typing: Type checking at compile time

• C, C++, Java

Dynamic Typing: Type checking at run time

• Python, JavaScript, Perl, Ruby

A dynamically-typed language can compile even if they contain errors that will prevent the script from running properly. However, if a script written in a statically-typed language contains errors, it will fail to compile until the errors have been fixed.

Statically-typed require you to declare data types of variables before you use them:

int num;
num = 5;

Dynamically-typed do not:

num = 5

See also: Strongly vs. Weakly Typed Languages