Python is DOOMED! Again!

[Steven D'Aprano]

Sturla Molden wrote:

> On 22/01/15 21:03, Mario Figueiredo wrote:
> 
>> That is fine. But then the problem isn't type hinting, is it? Neither I
>> think you are suggesting we don't introduce language because there are
>> bad project managers out there.
>>
>> The problem is then bad project managers. That has nothing to do with
>> type hinting, or Python for that matter.
> 
> It has everything to do with Python if we facilitate them.
> 
> Type hinting will be mandatory because of bad managers. 

Oh come on, that's ridiculous.

If your manager is so bad, why isn't he insisting that you program in PHP or
Java or Algol 68 [insert name of some language you dislike] instead of
Python? Is your bad manager forcing you to write Java-style code in Python,
or insisting on Hungarian Notation?

And how does *your* bad manager force *me* to change my coding style?

This is especially ridiculous given how much Python code is open-source and
beholden to nobody except the author.


> But then someone 
> is going to ask what benefit Python has to offer:
> 
> Readabiliy? No ... down the drain.

A ridiculous overreaction to a minor syntactic change which has been
available in Python 3.x for about five years.


> Dynamic typing? No ... down the drain.

That's just completely untrue. The presence of a type-checker doesn't
prevent dynamic typing. If you think it does, I'm afraid you don't
understand the difference between static and dynamic typing, you don't
understand the proposal for type-hinting as already demonstrated by Mypy,
or both.

This proposal is not based on a theoretical hope that it will help Python,
it has already been working for a number of years. The difference is that
now Guido is taken *proven technology* from a third-party implementation,
Mypy, and standardising the language so that other implementations, IDEs,
text editors, linters and other tools can make use of it.


> Speed? No ... still 200x slower than Swift.

That would make Swift 20x faster than C. Even PyPy doesn't claim to be ten
times faster than C across the board.



-- 
Steven