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

[Collin Winter]

On 8/14/06, Paul Prescod <paul at prescod.net> wrote:
> On 8/14/06, Collin Winter <collinw at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/14/06, Paul Prescod <paul at prescod.net> wrote:
> > > Second, we can decide to do the standardization at any point.
> >
> > Um, "at any point"? You mean it's conceivable that this
> > standardisation could come *after* Python ships with function
> > annotations?
>
> Sure. Why not?

Because not having standardised meanings at the same time as the
feature becomes available says to developers, "don't use the built-in
types in your annotations because we might give them a meaning
later...or maybe we won't...but in the meantime, you're going to need
to invent new spellings for lists, tuples, dicts, sets, strings, just
in case". As someone writing an annotation consumer, that comes across
as an incredibly arbitrary decision that forces me to do a lot of
extra work.

Collin Winter