Does Python really follow its philosophy of "Readability counts"?

[Russ P.]

On Jan 25, 7:56 pm, Mark Wooding <m... at distorted.org.uk> wrote:
> "Russ P." <Russ.Paie... at gmail.com> writes:
>
> [snip stuff I don't disagree with]
>
> > That makes renaming and refactoring riskier in general in Python than
> > in statically typed languages with enforced access restrictions. More
> > care and attention to detail is needed to do it right in Python.
>
> In fact, I don't disagree with this statement either.  It's just that I
> think there's a legitimate tradeoff between the assurances you can get
> from a language designed for static analysis and strictness, and the
> freedom and dynamicness of languages like Python.  It's just that I
> rather like where Python is now on this continuum, and disagree that
> shifting it is necessarily a good idea.
>
> -- [mdw]

I would like to have the option to use Python either way, if possible
-- and I honestly don't know if it is possible. The new type
annotations are a step in that direction. They are optional, but if
used they could make refactoring safer and facilitate static analysis.
Enforced access restrictions, if they can be added to Python, would be
optional too -- as they are in any language.