[Python-Dev] Type hints -- a mediocre programmer's reaction (original) (raw)
Jack Diederich jackdied at gmail.com
Tue Apr 21 01:41:00 CEST 2015
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Twelve years ago a wise man said to me "I suggest that you also propose a new name for the resulting language"
I talked with many of you at PyCon about the costs of PEP 484. There are plenty of people who have done a fine job promoting the benefits.
It is not optional. Please stop saying that. The people promoting it would prefer that everyone use it. If it is approved it will be optional in the way that PEP8 is optional. If I'm reading your annotated code it is certainly /not/ optional that I understand the annotations.
Uploading stubs for other people's code is a terrible idea. Who do I contact when I update the interface to my library? The random Joe who "helped" by uploading annotations three months ago and then quit the internet? I don't even want to think about people maliciously adding stubs to PyPI.
The cognitive load is very high. The average function signature will double in length. This is not a small cost and telling me it is "optional" to pretend that every other word on the line doesn't exist is a farce.
Every company's style guide is about to get much longer. That in itself is an indicator that this is a MAJOR language change and not just some "optional" add-on.
People will screw it up. The same people who can't be trusted to program without type annotations are also going to be writing those type annotations.
Teaching python is about to get much less attractive. It will not be optional for teachers to say "just pretend all this stuff over here doesn't exist"
"No new syntax" is a lie. Or rather a red herring. There are lots of new things it will be required to know and just because the compiler doesn't have to change doesn't mean the language isn't undergoing a major change.
If this wasn't in a PEP and it wasn't going to ship in the stdlib very few people would use it. If you told everyone they had to install a different python implementation they wouldn't. This is much worse than that - it is Python4 hidden away inside a PEP.
There are many fine languages that have sophisticated type systems. And many bondage & discipline languages that make you type things three times to make really really sure you meant to type that. If you find those other languages appealing I invite you to go use them instead.
-Jack
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