Query about Types SIG status

[Paul Prescod]

Michael Abbott wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> There seem to be a variety of documents in varying stages of maturity, but
> it's difficult to see what the current state of thinking is.  There's a
> document from Guido van Rossum with some early ideas, an unnumbered PEP
> from Paul Prescod on an interface declaration language, and PEP-0245 by
> Michel Pelletier, plus a number of other papers.  However (it's difficult
> to tell), most of these seem to be quite elderly!

Like almost everything in the Python world, the types-sig is very
personality driven. When there is a person stirring up the pot, the pot
is very active. When there isn't, it isn't.

> Clearly the ideas of interfaces and of static types are distinct but
> closely related developments.  Is this an area of active development, or is
> the current consensus that it's not worth the effort?

No, there is no consensus. I think it would be useful to be able to
check types at module boundaries and if I could get a week of vacation
I'll make some more progress on that. The Zope guys are very interested
in interfaces as a documentation and introspection tool and they'll
probably advance that when they get time. Static types are the least
like to be reactivated any time soon because they are nightmarishly
complex to try to add to the Python type system -- especially while
Guido is changing the type system between version 2.1 and 2.2.

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