[Python-3000] What's the point of annotations?

[Guido van Rossum]

On 1/3/07, Collin Winter <collinw at gmail.com> wrote:
> PS: I think it's interesting how nearly all the use-cases mentioned
> involve adding type information to functions.

Not surprising, since that's the context where this was first brought
up. The earliest proposals *did* suggest standard type-checking and/or
adaptation semantics. Those were shot down, but the conclusion was
that some sort of syntax to tie attributes directly to arguments would
make it much easier to implement and experiment with alternative
schemes. Not all of those schemes need to use decorators, BTW -- it is
easily conceivable to use a metaclass that implements some kind of of
type checking or adaptation for all methods that have any kind of
argument annotation.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)