"no variable or argument declarations are necessary."

[Ben Sizer]

Paul Rubin wrote:

> Let's see if I understand what you're saying:
>
>     C and Java: you get useful type checking except when you declare
>     a reference as type ANY.  This is a shortcoming compared to:
>
>     Python: where you get no useful type checking at all.
>
> That is not very convincing logic.

It's started to get very misleading - Python gives you plenty of
type-checking, as we all know, just not at compile-time. Also comparing
Python to C/Java as you have done is not very appropriate unless you
want Python to have the same sort of compile times as C and Java do.

I think you're doing a small disservice to respond to Steve when not
acknowledging the context of the thread, where Diez was explaining that
the system used in ML would not work in Python, then Antoon made a
suggestion that would fix that particular problem but make others
worse.

I'm not convinced that the Java route - where you type out lengthy type
declarations to get some compile-time typechecking which you usually
end up having to bypass later anyway - is at all beneficial, at least
not in the context of Python. I can't ever remember a time when I
thought "type checking really saved me from a bug there" when using
C/C++/Java, but I _can_ remember many times where I've had to consider
which cast or conversion to use, or had to write another overloaded
function to accommodate a similar-but-different type, or debug a
complex template message, or add a superfluous base class or interface,
all just to get the kind of genericity that Python gives for free. And
it's no good saying that variable declarations will be optional,
because as soon as these statically-typed variables enter the standard
library, every Python programmer will have to take these considerations
on board when writing their code, whether we want to use them or not.

-- 
Ben Sizer