does lack of type declarations make Python unsafe?

[Peter Hansen]

Donn Cave wrote:
> 
> In article <3EEE7D4C.DA0B3512 at engcorp.com>,
>  Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
> ...
> > Pah!  We're not talking about a bunch of morons here, we're talking about
> > intelligent people who might not have encountered a particular approach
> > which could allow them to improve the quality of their output.  Why
> > would you think people aren't intelligent enough to understand that
> > nothing is an absolute, that no process or language or generalization
> > of any kind will ever be adequate for all possible situations?  If I've
> > said something that claims XP or TDD will work for everyone, always,
> > then I hereby take it back, but I'm sure I haven't said such a thing
> > unless it was in one of my 3:30 in the morning after a lousy few hours
> > of sleep kind of postings...
> 
> He's not the only one who gets a message something like that
> from the unit testing advocates on c.l.p.  Without the hyperbolic
> ``all possible situations'', sure, but more to the point, does
> the discussion usually acknowledge significant exceptions, or
> rather tend to dismiss them?

I'm not sure, not recalling specific cases where there was any
mention of significant exceptions which were then dismissed.

I'm also not sure that the point of my comments is so much to debate
the effectiveness of agile processes as it is to encourage 
experimentation with them amongst other Python users.  The proper
place for debate about those processes is probably the relevant
mailing lists, such as the testdrivendevelopment and extremeprogramming
on Yahoo Groups (groups.yahoo.com).

Without that necessary step, the discussion is between those
who have tried it and (apparently, so far, almost universally)
found it highly effective, and those who have not tried it and
therefore have no particular facts on which to base their 
dismissal of it.  Then there are those who claim to have already
tried it years ago, by writing lots of tests before they wrote any
code, thereby demonstrating their complete failure to understand
the qualitative difference between that and the way TDD actually works.

-Peter