Refers to how the language treats the types of variables
- Related: Compile time vs runtime
Static
- each variable stores a value of a specific type and the type needs to be known ahead of time
- cannot reassign types
int x = 3;
x = "hello"; // fails to compile because x can only hold an integer
// still static because the compiler will still have to figure out the type during compile time
x = 3;
x = "hello"; // this still fails to compile because x can only hold an integerDynamic
- You don’t declare the type of the variable
- We can reassign different types of variables
- Python, JS
- The types don’t need to be known at compile time although they can be checked at runtime
x = 3 # x holds an int
x = "hello" # now x holds a string