[Python-ideas] ABC: what about the method arguments ?

[Guido van Rossum]

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 11:52 AM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Sep 2010 14:39:01 -0400
> Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
>> If I were writing a class intended to implement an particular ABC, I
>> would be happy to have an automated check function that might catch
>> errors. 100% testing is hard to achieve.
>
> How would an automatic check function solve anything, if you don't test
> that the class does what is expected?
>
> Again, this is exactly the argument for compile-time type checking, and
> it is routinely pointed out that it is mostly useless.

That may be the party line of dynamic-language diehards, but that
doesn't make it true. There are plenty of times when compile-time
checking can save the day, and typically, the larger a system, the
more useful it becomes. Antoine, can you back off your attempts to
prove that the proposed feature is useless and instead help designing
the details of the feature (or if you can't or don't want to help
there, just stay out of the discussion)?

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)