Languages like Java (which was THE statically typed language around that time) were extremely verbose and inexpressive. It's hard to write anything in Java without metric tons of boilerplate and repeating the type of every value over and over and over again.
On top of it, with OOP languages it's very easy to box the code in deep layers of ridiculous inheritance taxonomies, making it pretty much impossible to refactor anything after business requirements changed. Barely any escape hatches and absolutely no flexibility.
And type-safety is kind of pointless when everything is of a given type "OR NULL".
I was always proponent of typing but after working with Java, I can totally see why so many people back in the day considered static typing as not worth it.
On top of it, with OOP languages it's very easy to box the code in deep layers of ridiculous inheritance taxonomies, making it pretty much impossible to refactor anything after business requirements changed. Barely any escape hatches and absolutely no flexibility.
And type-safety is kind of pointless when everything is of a given type "OR NULL".
I was always proponent of typing but after working with Java, I can totally see why so many people back in the day considered static typing as not worth it.