[Types-sig] Re: [Python-Dev] Revive the types sig?

[Jeremy Hylton]

>>>>> "UO" == Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com> writes:

  UO> Jeremy Hylton:
  >> If documentation is really the problem you want to solve, I
  >> imagine we'd make much more progress if we could agree on a
  >> javadoc-style format for documentation.  The ability to add
  >> return-type declarations to functions and methods doesn't seem
  >> like much of a win.

  UO> If I understand Jeremy correctly, I am in strong agreement that
  UO> it is at least worth trying the structured documentation
  UO> approach to signalling pre- and post-conditions before turning
  UO> Python into a rather different language.

I was being a bit contrary :-).  If the goal of a type system is to
declare that some functions return an int and others return an object,
I suspect that good documentation will be more valuable to more
people.  (And it would have less runtime cost than type checking!)
The Python community, however, has been trying to come up with a
simple and sufficient documentation system for far longer than people
have been worrying about its type system.

I'm ambivalent about static typing, although I agree with Marcin and
Neel that we know enough about bad static type systems (C++ and Java)
that we ought to know enough to include parameterized types.  It
sounds like those of us in this camp will have to come up with our own
proposal.

Jeremy