Refactoring Ruby is painful in a large project, even with decent test coverage (and a large portion of the tests basically enforce what you'd get automatically with static typing). C++ is doable in that you'll get (increasingly humane with clang and recent GCCs) compiler errors when you've forgotten some detail. But refactoring Java is positively germane with all of the tools that are enabled by such a consistent VM-model. (It really is neat to be able to rename a method in an object on 100k LOC project simply by renaming it in one place or to change a signature with helpers along the way.)

Some of that makes those languages less fun (and quick) to work with initially, but for projects that are likely to eventually grow quite large, there can be an eventual pay-off.