Function override?

[Tim Peters]

[David C. Ullrich]
> ...
> This is certainly one of the things that _I_ find keen,
> amyway - I hope the people who are talking about adding
> stricter typing to Python make it optional somehow.

Yup, not to worry.  All proposals to date make static typing declarations
optional, and by default not needed.  It may be that the choice will apply
to entire modules, though (that is, that if you want to use static
declarations in one part of a module, you'll need to use it everywhere in
that module; other modules make their own choices).

> There are obvious advantages to stricter typing but you lose
> something as well. (For example, I get a big kick out of
> the fact that exactly the  same euclidean-algorithm code
> works to find the GCD of two integers or the GCD of
> two polynomials. Etc.)

This isn't a problem with static typing per se, provided the system is rich
enough to let you define a suitable EuclideanDomain type.  The system is not
rich enough today, but people throughout this industry hold a charming faith
that tomorrow's solutions won't suffer today's problems <wink>.

just-a-fan-of-the-illusion-of-progress-ly y'rs  - tim