The drawback is that operators have to be distinct by type: for example, "+." is used for floating-point addition and "+" for integer addition.

This drawback is not part of the general tradeoff that comes with type checking but rather is an artifact of certain implementations. For example, Haskell's type system supports type classes and does away with this limitation:

$ ghci
   ___         ___ _
  / _ \ /\  /\/ __(_)
 / /_\// /_/ / /  | |  GHC Interactive, version 6.2.1, for Haskell 98.
/ /_\\/ __  / /___| |  http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
\____/\/ /_/\____/|_|  Type :? for help.
 
Loading package base ... linking ... done.
Prelude> :t (+)
(+) :: forall a. (Num a) => a -> a -> a
Prelude> 1 + 1
2
Prelude> 1.0 + 1.0
2.0
Prelude> :module +Ratio
Prelude Ratio> 1%2 + 1%3
5 % 6
[download]

Cheers,
Tom

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