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> (people writing dynamically typed languages eventually resort to type comments)

This has never been an issue in Elixir, because instead of a comment, you'd just improve the pattern matching in the function definition.

    def blah(%{students: [%{firstname: firstname, lastname: lastname}|[]], count: cnt}) when is_int(cnt):
      fullname = firstname <> lastname

Is a valid function declaration, which specifies that blah takes a dictionary that contains at least 2 keys, :count, who's value is an integer, and :students, who's value is a length-1 list who's first element is a dictionary that contains the keys :firstname and :lastname

awesome_dude 4 hours ago [ - ]

is_int is doing the work of a type checker?

I mean I'm not an Elixer guy (not at all) so it's a bit opaque to me how that's not an enforcement of specific types (albeit the firstname, lastname can be anything?)

Once we get into the function itself, if two incompatible types, say a string and a filehandle.. (just random attempt, you may, if you choose, point to why the two types must have some alignment), what happens - the function dies?

That's my core issue with dynamic typing, you might argue that the function's explosion has a restricted blast radius, but that's not the point, the point is that the function was called, and was unable to compute whatever, and that's a bug.