[Python-ideas] Why is design-by-contracts not widely adopted?

[Lee Braiden]

Eh. It's too easy to cry "show me the facts" in any argument.  To do that
too often is to reduce all discussion to pendantry.

That verifying data against the contract a function makes code more
reliable should be self evident to anyone with even the most rudimentary
understanding of a function call, let alone a library or large
application.  It's the reason why type checking exists, and why bounds
checking exists, and why unit checking exists too.

On Tue, 25 Sep 2018, 20:43 Chris Angelico, <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 3:19 AM Marko Ristin-Kaufmann
> <marko.ristin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Claiming that DbC annotations will improve the documentation of every
> >> single library on PyPI is an extraordinary claim, and such claims
> >> require extraordinary proof.
> >
> >
> > I don't know what you mean by "extraordinary" claim and "extraordinary"
> proof, respectively. I tried to show that DbC is a great tool and far
> superior to any other tools currently used to document contracts in a
> library, please see my message
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/python-ideas/dmXz_7LH4GI/5A9jbpQ8CAAJ.
> Let me re-use the enumeration I used in the message and give you a short
> summary.
> >
>
> An ordinary claim is like "DbC can be used to improve code and/or
> documentation", and requires about as much evidence as you can stuff
> into a single email. Simple claim, low burden of proof.
>
> An extraordinary claim is like "DbC can improve *every single project*
> on PyPI". That requires a TON of proof. Obviously we won't quibble if
> you can only demonstrate that 99.95% of them can be improved, but you
> have to at least show that the bulk of them can.
>
> > There are 150K projects on pypi.org. Each one of them would benefit if
> annotated with the contracts.
>
> This is the extraordinary claim. To justify it, you have to show that
> virtually ANY project would benefit from contracts. So far, I haven't
> seen any such proof.
>
> ChrisA
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