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Python developers are embracing type hints

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Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#201

Post by jgb1984 »

pansa2 wrote: post #131
jgb1984 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more! I've been using Python for almost 20 years, my whole career is built on it, and I never missed typing. Code with type hints is so verbose and unpythonic, making it much harder to read. Quite an annoying evolution.

As the article says, type hints represent a fundamental change in the way Python is written. Most developers seem to prefer this new approach (especially those who’d rather be writing Java, but are stuck using Python because of its libraries). However it is indeed annoying for those of us who liked writing Python 2.x-style dynamically-typed executable pseudocode. The community is now actively opposed to writing that…

There is nothing python-2 about my python-3 dynamically typed code. I'm pretty confident a majority of new python code is still being written without type hints.

Hell, python type annotations were only introduced in python 3.5, the language was 24 years old by then! So no, the way I write python is the way it was meant to be, type hints are the gadget that was bolted on when the language was already fully matured, it's pretty ridiculous painting code without type hints as unpythonic, that's the world upside down.

If I wanted to write very verbose typed code I would switch to Go or Rust. My python stays nimble, clean and extremely readable, without type hints.

Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#202

Post by kstenerud »

lysace wrote: post #30
simonw wrote: post #25

The thing that finally got me on board with optional type hints in Python was realizing that they're mainly valuable as documentation. But it's really valuable documentation! Knowing what types are expected and returned just by looking at a function signature is super useful.

Decent argument in principle. It still sucks for non-obvious types though: https://old.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/10zdidm/why_type_hi... Edit: Yes, one can sometimes go with Any, depending on the linter setup, but that's missing the point, isn't it?

Actually, it's not missing the point. Sometimes you really do want duck typing, in which case you allow Any. It's not all-or-nothing.

What the reddit post is demonstrating is that the Python type system is still too naive in many respects (and that there are implementation divergences in behavior). In other languages, this is a solved problem - and very ergonomic and safe.

Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#203

Post by cardanome »

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.

> slowly become statically typed

They don't. They become gradually typed which is a thing of it's own.

You can keep the advantages of dynamic languages, the ease of prototyping but also lock down stuff when you need to.

It is not a perfect union, generally the trade-off is that you can either not achieve the same safety level as in a purely statically typed language because you need to provide same escape hatches or you need a extremely complex type system to catch the expressiveness of the dynamic side. Most of the time it is a mixture of both.

Still, I think this is the way to go. Not dynamic typing won or static typing won but both a useful and having a language support both is a huge productivity boost.

Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#204

Post by integralid »

flohofwoe wrote: post #130
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.

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…

If you like dynamic types have you considered using protocols? They are used precisely to type duck typed code.

Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#205

Post by [deleted] »

pansa2 wrote: post #127
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.

> all the popular dynamic languages have slowly become statically typed I’ve heard this before, but it’s not really true. Yes, maybe the majority of JavaScript code is now statically-typed, via Typescript. Some percentage of Python code is (I don’t know the numbers). But that’s about it. Very few people are using static typing in Ruby, Lua, Clojure, Julia, etc.

[deleted]

Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#206

Post by Sharlin »

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.

Everything goes in cycles. It has happened before and it will happen again. The softward industry is incredibly bad at remembering lessons once learned.

Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#207

Post by iLoveOncall »

pansa2 wrote: post #127
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.

> all the popular dynamic languages have slowly become statically typed I’ve heard this before, but it’s not really true. Yes, maybe the majority of JavaScript code is now statically-typed, via Typescript. Some percentage of Python code is (I don’t know the numbers). But that’s about it. Very few people are using static typing in Ruby, Lua, Clojure, Julia, etc.

PHP as well has become statically typed.

All the languages you name are niche languages compared to Python, JS (/ TS) and PHP. Whether you like it or not.

Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#208

Post by mhitza »

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.

I think you're ignoring how for some of us, gradual typing, is a far better experience than languages with static types.

For example what I like about PHPStan (tacked on static analysis through comments), that it offers so much flexibility when defining type constraints. Can even specify the literal values a function accepts besides the base type. And subtyping of nested array structures (basically support for comfortably typing out the nested structure of a json the moment I decode it).

Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#209

Post by kstenerud »

rcfox wrote: post #26
secondcoming wrote: post #3

I recently had to debug someone else's Python code and trying to figure out what variables are was a massive headache, especially coming from C++.

In Python, every variable is either defined or imported in the file in which it's used, so you always know where to find it. (Assuming you don't do `from foo import *`, which is frowned upon.) In C++, a variable might be defined in a header or in a parent class somewhere else, and there's no indication of where it came from.

CMD-click shows you.

Re: Python developers are embracing type hints

#210

Post by xurukefi »

For me, type hints are mainly useful because they're the only reliable way to get decent IDE auto-completion. Beyond that, they feel like a bolted-on compromise that goes against the spirit of Python. If you really need strict typing, you're probably better off using a statically typed language.
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