[Python-Dev] Type hints -- a mediocre programmer's reaction

[Paul Moore]

(Gmail messed up the attributions - apologies if I didn't fix them up
correctly).

 21 April 2015 at 19:55, Łukasz Langa <lukasz at langa.pl> wrote:
>>
>> On Apr 21, 2015, at 11:23 AM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>>
>>> 2. Clearly, great thought has been put into this PEP. If anyone has a good
>>> analysis of the potential impact on Python 3 adoption, please do pass along.
>>> I would be interested in reading the information.
>>
>> I wish I had a crystal ball, but this is hard to predict. Anecdotally, some
>> people believe this will be catnip, while others believe it to be poison.
>> The truth will surely be somewhere in the middle. At this point we don't
>> know what drives Python 3 adoption except time -- it's definitely going up.
>> :-)
>>
>
> Anecdotal evidence shows that some organizations perceive this feature as
> one that justifies migration. Some of those organizations are pretty serious
> about open-sourcing things. That makes me believe that by sheer volume of
> the code they’re producing, Python 3 adoption will continue to increase.
>
> As Gregory Smith rightfully pointed out, nobody wants ugly code. I
> understand why people are afraid of that and it warms my heart that they
> are. The community cares so much about aesthetics and readability, it’s
> great!
>
> We will evolve this over time. This will be a learning process for everybody
> but we can’t learn to swim by only theorizing about it. We thought of the
> evolving nature of the solution from Day 1, hence the *provisional* nature
> of it. The wordy syntax is another example of that. Not requiring changes to
> the interpreter and the standard library was very high on the list of
> priorities. Once the *concept* proves itself, then we can improve on the
> syntax.
>
> Acknowledging PEP 484 being just the second step^ in a long journey is why
> some “obvious” parts are left out for now (hello, duck typing; hello,
> multiple dispatch; hello, runtime type checks in unit tests; etc. etc.).
> Those are often big enough to warrant their own PEPs.
>
> ^ PEP 3107 being the first.

Thank you for this response. For some reason, it's reassured me a lot
(I've no idea really why it struck a chord with me more than any of
the other responses in the thread, just one of those things, I guess).

Paul