Are the critiques in "All the things I hate about Python" valid?

Paul Moore p.f.moore at gmail.com
Mon Feb 19 08:28:26 EST 2018


On 19 February 2018 at 13:06, Anders Wegge Keller <wegge at wegge.dk> wrote:
>  Python isn't particular strong typed. In fact, apart from asking an object
> what type it is, types are not that important. It's the interface that
> matters. I wonder why this is a sore point for Python developers?

Because there's a long history of people claiming that "strongly
typed" languages are fundamentally better than "scripting languages"
(and putting Python in the "scripting language" class) without either
being clear about what "strongly typed" means, or about whether Python
is actually strongly typed or not[1], maybe?

The reality is that the term "strongly typed" can be made to mean
whatever you want it to mean in these debates, and such claims usually
turn out to be little more than statements "yah boo my language is
better than yours and your language sucks".

Paul

[1] The most basic question, which people making such claims often
can't answer, is "Do you mean that values are strongly typed, or that
names are? Or did you mean that variables are, because if so Python
doesn't even have variables in the sense that you mean" Programming
language semantics are complex.



More information about the Python-list mailing list