[Python-3000] Draft pre-PEP: function annotations

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 3:16 PM 8/12/2006 -0700, Talin <talin at acm.org> wrote:
>Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> > At 06:10 AM 8/11/2006 -0700, Talin <talin at acm.org> wrote:
> >> Or to put it another way: If you create a tool, and you assume that tool
> >> will only be used in certain specific ways, but you fail to enforce that
> >> limitation, then your assumption will be dead wrong. The idea that there
> >> will only be a few type annotation providers who will all nicely
> >> cooperate with one another is just as naive as I was in the SysEx
> >> debacle.
> >
> > Are you saying that function annotations are a bad idea because we won't
> > be able to pickle them?
>
>Huh? What does pickling have to do with anything I said?

I'll happily answer that question as soon as you explain what *function 
annotations* have to do with anything you said.  Bonus points if you can 
explain what MIDI has to do with overloaded functions.  :)

To put it another way, the only reason I asked about pickling was to try to 
find *some* meaning in your post.  If pickling doesn't relate, then your 
post has nothing to do with function annotations, because pickling is the 
most similar thing to the programming problem you actually described.

However, if pickling *does* relate, then the mere existence of Python's 
ability to do pickling proves that the MIDI issue, transferred to the 
Python sphere, doesn't actually exist.

Thus, either way, the MIDI problems you described are moot with respect to 
function annotations in Python.

Is that clearer?  (See also my replies to Greg and Josiah on this subject.)