> There already are static typed actor systems (e.g. Orleans)
Yep, I develop one myself. And have gone to the extent of not allowing senders to even post a message if it's of the wrong type (processes in nodes publish the types they accept to a central store). I initially went along with the 'accept anything' approach (which Akka really majors on too), but found that for the large systems I was developing that it became a real headache to deal with.
> but my point is that I believe OTP is more flexible for better or worse. Whether that flexibility is worth it to you for what you get is another matter.
Yep, fair enough, if it works for you, who am I to complain? It's not worth it for me, because I feel quite strongly that the code I write should understand the types it's working with. It feels like this super-late binding can give false positives, appear to work, when in fact it's not. That scares the shit out of me when systems get large.