optional types

[Ethan Furman]

On 10/29/2014 10:18 AM, Kiuhnm wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 29, 2014 5:57:13 PM UTC+1, Peter Otten wrote:
>> Kiuhnm wrote:
>>
>>> I must say that the lack of static types in Python is a pain in the neck
>>> especially when I'm exploring new libraries. Recently, I learned a new
>>> language called Dart which have optional typing and I had a lot of fun
>>> with it. Basically, you use type annotations as documentation and to give
>>> useful information to the IDE or editor. That makes the IDE look *very*
>>> smart! I'm using PyCharm and more often than not I want to see the list of
>>> methods and attributes of an object, but the editor won't show them to me
>>> because it doesn't know the dynamic type of the variable whose value was
>>> just returned by a function. That's irritating! Am I the only one who'd
>>> like to see optional types introduced in Python?
>>
>> Personally I am skeptical, but there is an effort underway:
>>
>> http://www.mypy-lang.org/
>> https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2014-August/028742.html
>>
>> Nothing that your search engine of choice could not have found you...
>
> In fact, I did find it, but that didn't stop me from asking :)
>
> You can find something similar for almost any dynamic language out there.
> If it isn't an official feature of the language, it's useless, IMHO.
>
> It seems that PyCharm supports some kind of type annotations:
> http://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/webhelp/using-docstrings-to-specify-types.html
> Unfortunately, again, if almost no one uses them, they're not very useful.

Even if it becomes official, which seems likely, it will still be optional -- hence, only useful if folks actually use 
it.  ;)

--
~Ethan~