I agree. I'm glad that they're optional. One of the main reasons to use Python is to prioritize development speed over performance AND to prioritize read/write-ability over hand jamming mundane syntax. I understand why some who have a background in typed languages might prefer to use Python with type hints, but it should be understood that they aren't very Pythonic.
Python’s “type hints” are a bit of a disappointment to me
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Re: Python’s “type hints” are a bit of a disappointment to me
#12I've annotated Python typing with a 20/80 approach.
I annotate strings, integers, floats, simple list and dict.
I don't try to produce complex type specs for lists, dicts, functions.
My company runs some kind of static analysis that checks things. And I get 80% of the benefit with 20% of the work. So start small, and don't expect perfection (yet).
Re: Python’s “type hints” are a bit of a disappointment to me
#13100% agree - never really understood the movement behind adding types to Python. Type hints are a useless complexity that yield little return. If you want types, use something else other than Python. The whole thesis behind Python is simple is better than complex.
How is "this function takes a string and returns a float" more complex than "this function takes any data type and returns an unspecified data type"?
Re: Python’s “type hints” are a bit of a disappointment to me
#14100% agree - never really understood the movement behind adding types to Python. Type hints are a useless complexity that yield little return. If you want types, use something else other than Python. The whole thesis behind Python is simple is better than complex.
On the one hand yeah, I agree with this, but on the other hand you have a lot of enormous software projects written in Python that are decidedly not simple, and would be extremely difficult to completely rewrite in a different language. Type hints do offer some value in this circumstance, by making it easier for disparate groups to modify the same large codebase though static analysis.
Re: Python’s “type hints” are a bit of a disappointment to me
#15I haven't used python's type hints much yet but I used TypeScript a bunch about a year ago and I have the exact same complaints. Most of the benefit of types goes away unless _everything_ is typed... my libraries, the libraries my libraries use, etc. I should be able to jump around in and out of library code following types and usages thereof in my IDE, making conclusions that are accurate based on what the types say…
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Re: Python’s “type hints” are a bit of a disappointment to me
#16I find type hinting useful as an additional level of documentation, especially for complex projects, and it helps my future self understand my own code more quickly.
Also in my experience it can provide static analysis tools more information and provide autocomplete suggestions in a wider range of coding scenarios.
Re: Python’s “type hints” are a bit of a disappointment to me
#17They feel like someone told the Python dev team about Julia's multiple dispatch based on types, and they felt like they had to respond, even though they don't really provide the actual speed and flexibility that motivates their use in Julia.
Re: Python’s “type hints” are a bit of a disappointment to me
#18I agree. I'm glad that they're optional. One of the main reasons to use Python is to prioritize development speed over performance AND to prioritize read/write-ability over hand jamming mundane syntax. I understand why some who have a background in typed languages might prefer to use Python with type hints, but it should be understood that they aren't very Pythonic.
> main reasons to use Python is to prioritize development speed
My experience with Python is that it slows development speed to a crawl due to dynamic typing. It’s maybe faster to write the first 1000 lines. But after that it becomes slower and more painful. At least in my experience.
Re: Python’s “type hints” are a bit of a disappointment to me
#19I agree. I'm glad that they're optional. One of the main reasons to use Python is to prioritize development speed over performance AND to prioritize read/write-ability over hand jamming mundane syntax. I understand why some who have a background in typed languages might prefer to use Python with type hints, but it should be understood that they aren't very Pythonic.
> I understand why some who have a background in typed languages might prefer to use Python with type hints, but it should be understood that they aren't very Pythonic.
Completely disagree. The Python community has very rapidly adapted mypy because of widespread recognition that yes, type information is extremely helpful for any code bases larger than a few files and/or worked on by more than a few developers. Every major Python library I can think of now has mypy stubs available. If you're going to dismiss them as "not Pythonic" you may as well dismiss anything other than Python 2.7 as "not Pythonic".
Re: Python’s “type hints” are a bit of a disappointment to me
#20this article is so full of... not-very-educated thoughts on gradual typing in a dynamic language that it's hard to know where to start.
A few concrete criticisms:
1. If you're using a dynamic language, then _by definition_ the language will not enforce your static hints at runtime. However, good news! Python has always been strongly typed, and _does_ enforce types at runtime!
2. A number of the examples given would be _impossible_ to statically type in most compiled languages (those without dependent types). It's hard to know where to go with a critique saying that you can't fully represent heterogeneous values in a dict, given that you can't do this _at all_ in many statically compiled languages.
It seems to fall back on saying "use of the type system requires too much discipline to be useful". This might be an interesting criticism on its own; however many current users of Python can say, from experience, that the required discipline is not a high enough hurdle that it prevents us from using types consistently and correctly.
There is plenty to critique about Python's static typing, but this article would have been better titled "I'm confused about Python's static type system and want somebody to show me how it's actually used in real-world scenarios".