Bools and explicitness [was Re: PyWart: The problem with "print"]

[Mark Janssen]

> Whatever benefit there is in declaring the type of a function is lost due
> to the inability to duck-type or program to an interface. There's no type
> that says "any object with a 'next' method", for example. And having to
> declare local variables is a PITA with little benefit.
>
> Give me a language with type inference, and a nice, easy way to keep duck-
> typing, and I'll reconsider. But until then, I don't believe the benefit
> of static types comes even close to paying for the extra effort.

Okay, I'm going straighten out you foo(l)s once and for all.

Python has seduced us all into lazy typing.  That's what it is.
Manual type checking is obviously inferior to compiler type-checking.
 This is what I was trying to tell you all with the post of re-vamping
the Object model.

Python, and I along with it, went towards this idea of a grand god
Object that is the father of everything, but it turned out to be the
wrong direction.  Refer to my post on OOPv2.

The fact is, that none of us is close enough to God and the
programming art isn't evolved enough to try to accomplish some grand
generic object at the top of the ObjectModel.  It just isn't.  We were
better off closer to the machine.  Automatic conversion from int to
long was good enough.
-- 
MarkJ
Tacoma, Washington

P.S. See also PythonThreeThousand on wikiwikiweb
<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiWeb>