PEP 3107 Function Annotations for review and comment

[Paul Boddie]

Tony Lownds wrote:
>
> It's possible packages like pylint will learn to interpret function annotations to provide
> better static analysis. Right?

It's true that for the area to be explored, which I know you've been
doing, one first has to introduce an annotation scheme that can then be
used by things like pylint. I'd like to see assertions about the
usefulness of such annotations verified by modified versions of tools
like pylint before changes to the language are made, mostly because
such assertions seem to be more conjecture than prediction. In other
words, the changes should be advocated, implemented and tested in a
closed system before being introduced as wider language changes,
especially given that Python has already seen a number of speculative
changes which were made in anticipation of certain needs that
subsequently appeared to be less significant than first thought.

Another thing I find worrying about function annotations is the
ambivalence around their purpose: the feature is supposedly great for
static typing, but when confronted over the consequences of having
developers spray type declarations everywhere, we're told that they
aren't really meant for such things and that type declarations are only
an example of what annotations could do. Here, the sales department and
the engineering department really have to get together and get their
story straight.

Paul