Static Typing in Python

[Peter Hansen]

Peter Hickman wrote:
> Jacek Generowicz wrote:
> 
> It would seem to be clear that what Guido considers to be strong typing 
> is not a feature of Python. As the following quote seems to indicate.
> 
> "Weak typing is not really a fair description of what's going on in 
> Python. It's really runtime typing because every object is labeled with 
> a type."
> 
> Here's the link http://www.artima.com/intv/strongweakP.html I would 
> recommend reading www.artima.com to anyone interested in programming.
> 
> So there we have it, Python is *NOT* strongly typed unless you know more 
> about Python than Guido van Rossum.

There's no indication there that Guido would have preferred to use the 
term "strongly typed" in this case, as the choice to use strong/weak as 
the focus of the article seems to have been the interviewer's, not the 
interviewee's.

Rather than your last sentence above, what you should write is "So there 
we have it, Guido is quoted using the term "strongly typed" in an 
interview in reference to languages which most comp.lang.python 
participants would now refer to as "statically typed", and in the same 
article referred to Python as "runtime typed", in contrast, probably in 
an attempt to avoid the usual confusion about whether or not Python is 
actually strongly typed (which certainly it is)."

Or something like that... ;-)

-Peter