Seeking brief description of the benefits of Type Inference

I have noticed that there have been several papers detailing different
algorithms for doing type inference, typically with respect to ML.
This leads me to conclude that it must be quite useful.


I don't know ML (or any other language that has type inference), and so
don't know why type inference is good. Other than obviating the need
to declare the type of constructs what are the benefits of it to the
work-a-day programmer/maintainer?


Could someone tell me an on-line reference that will answer my
question?


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-Thanks, David Template Software david.witten@template.com
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