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Python developers are embracing type hints

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Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#151

Post by 1313ed01 »

lolive wrote: post #140
flohofwoe wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTH I only came to realize that I actually like duck typing in some situations when I tried to add type hints to one of my Python projects (and then removed them again because the actually important types consisted almost entirely of sum types, and what's the point of static typing if anything is a variant anyway). E.g. when Python is used as a 'scripting language' instead of a 'programming language' (like for writin…

Note1: Type hints are hints for the reader. If you cleverly discovered that your function is handling any type of data, hint that! Note2: From my experience, in Java, i have NEVER seen a function that consumes explicitely an Object. In Java, you always name things. Maybe with parametric polymorphism, to capture complex typing patterns. Note 3: unfortunately, you cannot subclass String, to capture the semantic of its…

> Java, i have NEVER seen a function that consumes explicitely an Object

So you did not see any Java code from before version 5 (in 2004) then, because the language did not have generics for the first several years it was popular. And of course many were stuck working with older versions of the language (or variants like mobile Java) without generics for many years after that.

Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#152

Post by isodev »

seanparsons wrote: post #110

As a static typing advocate I do find it funny how all the popular dynamic languages have slowly become statically typed. After decades of people saying it's not at all necessary and being so critical of statically typed languages. When I was working on a fairly large TypeScript project it became the norm for dependencies to have type definitions in a relatively short space of time.

> After decades of people saying

You have to admit that the size and complexity of the software we write has increased dramatically over the last few "decades". Looking back at MVC "web applications" I've created in the early 2000s, and comparing them to the giant workflows we deal with today... it's not hard to imagine how dynamic typing was/is ok to get started, but when things exceed one's "context", you type hints help.

Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#153

Post by entropyneur »

I know I am going to be in the minority, but I don't understand why we can't let Python be Python. Static typing is great, and there are already other statically typed languages for all your needs. Why not use them?

Well, at least it doesn't create two incompatible Pythons like async and (I assume) free threading.

Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#155

Post by aunderscored »

JackSlateur wrote: post #147

One can hope that cpython will use them, one day "if a parameter is typed as an int, then only run the specialized 'int' code to process it" This would increase performance and make typing more useful

Without significant language changes, this is not possible. While your code may be typed as an int, I can simply redefine what int means. I can also modify the code in your method.

Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#156

Post by IshKebab »

JimDabell wrote: post #121
ninetyninenine wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Type annotations don’t double productivity. What does “increase safety by 2×” even mean? What metric are you tracking there? My own anecdotal metric. Isn't that obvious? The initial post was an anecdotal opinion as well. I don't see a problem here. >In my experience, the main non-documentation benefit of type annotations is warning where the code is assuming a value where None might be present. Mixing up any other k…

> My own anecdotal metric. Isn't that obvious? The initial post was an anecdotal opinion as well. I don't see a problem here. WTF is “an anecdotal metric”‽ That just sounds like an evasive way to say “I want to make up numbers I can’t justify” . > wtf is direction object? Is it in Cartesian or is it in polar? Is in 2D or 3D? This seems very domain-specific. > Most people who complain like you literally have mostly co…

> WTF is “an anecdotal metric”

It's a metric (how much more productive he is), and anecdotal (base only on his experience). Pretty obvious I would have thought.

> This seems very domain-specific.

It was an example from one domain but all domains have types of things. Are you really trying to say that only 3D games specifically would benefit from static types?

> Just because somebody disagrees with you, it doesn’t mean they are a clueless junior.

Clueless senior then I guess? Honestly I don't know how you can have this much experience and still not come to the obvious conclusion. Perhaps you only write small scripts or solo projects where it's more feasible to get away without static types?

What would you say to someone who said "I have 25 years of experience reading books with punctuation and I think that punctuation is a waste of time. Just because you disagree with me doesn't mean I'm clueless."?

Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#157

Post by jmorenoamor »

seanparsons wrote: post #110

As a static typing advocate I do find it funny how all the popular dynamic languages have slowly become statically typed. After decades of people saying it's not at all necessary and being so critical of statically typed languages. When I was working on a fairly large TypeScript project it became the norm for dependencies to have type definitions in a relatively short space of time.

Coming from Java extreme verbosity, I just loved the freedom of python 20 years ago. Working with complex structures with mixed types was a breeze.

Yes, it was your responsibility to keep track of correctness, but that also taught me to write better code, and better tests.

Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#158

Post by Ekaros »

circadian wrote: post #19

I really love Python for it's expedience, but type hints still feel like they don't belong in the language. They don't seem to come with the benefits of optimisation that you get with static typed languages. As someone who uses C and Julia (and wishes they had time for Rust), introducing solid typing yields better end results at a minimum, or is a requirement at the other end of the scale. The extra typing clarificat…

Remembering project where type hints would have been helpful to grok the code I do now mostly like them. They are useful when you come back after days or weeks and try to remember what does this function produce and what does this one actually take in.

And Python always was rather strongly typed, so you anyway had to consider the types. Now you get notes. Which often do help.

Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#159

Post by adalacelove »

pydry wrote: post #138
adalacelove wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People adapt to the circumstances. A lot of Python uses are no longer about fast iteration on the REPL. Instead of that we are shipping Python to execute in clusters on very long running jobs or inside servers. It's not only about having to start all over after hours, it's simply that concurrent and distributed execution environments are hostile to interactive programming. Now you can't afford to wait for an exceptio…

Here we are because: * Types are expensive and dont tend to pay off on spikey/experimental/MVP code, most of which gets thrown away. * Types are incredibly valuable on hardened production code. * Most good production code started out spikey, experimental or as an MVP and transitioned . And so here we are with gradual typing because "throwing away all the code and rewriting it to be "perfect" in another language" has…

In some fields throwing away and rewriting is the standard, and it works, more or less. I'm thinking about scientific/engineering software: prototype in Python or Matlab and convert to C or C++ for performance/deployment constraints. It happens frequently with compilers too. I think migrating languages is actually more successful than writing second versions.

Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#160

Post by IshKebab »

circadian wrote: post #19

I really love Python for it's expedience, but type hints still feel like they don't belong in the language. They don't seem to come with the benefits of optimisation that you get with static typed languages. As someone who uses C and Julia (and wishes they had time for Rust), introducing solid typing yields better end results at a minimum, or is a requirement at the other end of the scale. The extra typing clarificat…

> The extra typing clarification in python makes the code harder to read.

It depends what you mean by "read". If you literally mean you're doing a weird Python poetry night then sure they're sort of "extra stuff" that gets in the way of your reading of `fib`.

But most people think of "reading code" and reading and understanding code, and in that case they definitely make it easier.

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