DAdavidatbu·Apr 22, 2022
I disagree diametrically with both the general sentiment of the article, and every major point that was made in it.
Every point in this blog post strikes me as either (1) unaware of the tooling around python typing other than mypy, or (2) a criticism of static-typing-bolted-on-to-a-dynamically-typed-language, rather than Python's hints. Regarding (1), my advise to OP is to try out Pyright, Pydantic, and Typeguard. Pyright, especailly, is amazing and makes the process of working with type hints 2 or 3 times smoother IMO. And, I don't think points that fall under (2) are fair criticisms of type *hints*. They are called hints for a reason.
Otherwise, here's a point-by-point response, either recommending OP checks out tooling, or showing that the point being made is not specific to Python.
> type hints are not binding.
There are projects [0]
Read the rest
[1] that allow you to enforce type hints at runtime if you so choose.
It's worth mentioning that this is very analogous to how Typescript does it, in that type info is erased completely at runtime.
> Type checking is your job after all, ...[and that] requires maintenance.
There are LSPs like Pyright[2] (pyright specifically is the absolute best, IMO) that report type errors as you code. Again, this is very very similar to typescript.
> There is an Any type and it renders everything useless
I have never seen a static-typing tool that was bolted on to a dynamically typed language, without an `Any` type, including typescript.
> Duck type compatibility of int and float
The author admits that they cannot state why this behavior is problematic, except for saying that it's "ambiguous".
> Most projects need third-party type hints
Again, this is a criticism of all cases where static types are bolted on dynamically typed languages, not Python's implementation specifically.
> Sadly, dataclasses ignore type hints as well
Pydantic[3] is an amazing data parsing library that takes advantage of type hints, and it's interface is a superset of that of dataclasses. What's more, it underpins FastAPI[4], an amazing API-backend framework (with 44K Github stars).
> Type inference and lazy programmers
The argument of this section boils down to using `Any` as a generic argument not being an error by default. This is configurable to be an error both in Pyright[5], and mypy[6].
> Exceptions are not covered [like Java]
I can't find the interview/presentation, but Guido Van Rossum specifically calls out Java's implementation of "exception annotations" as a demonstration of why that is a bad idea, and that it would never happen in Python. I'm not saying Guido's opinion is the absolute truth, but just letting you know that this is an explicit decision, not an unwanted shortcoming.
[0] https://github.com/RussBaz/enforce
[1] https://github.com/agronholm/typeguard
[2] https://github.com/microsoft/pyright
[3] https://pydantic-docs.helpmanual.io
[4] https://github.com/tiangolo/fastapi
[5] https://github.com/microsoft/pyright/blob/main/docs/configur...
[6] https://mypy.readthedocs.io/en/stable/config_file.html#confv...