[Python-ideas] Adding "Typed" collections/iterators to Python

[Devin Jeanpierre]

Hm, I made a lie. That isn't the point I was trying to make. Or
rather, I made two points at once originally, and the second one
contradicted the first one :)

(I stated that strong vs weak is dumb, and then I said Python was
weakly typed. I meant to say "in the sense that Agda is strong", but I
guess I screwed that one up)

*sigh*.

It's perfectly possible to say that Python is strongly typed, with a
self-consistent definition of "strongly typed". It's also possible to
say that it's weakly typed, with another self-consistent definition.
There is no _standard_ definition. The definition that Agda uses is
not the definition that Python uses.

I think people tend to choose the one that is least likely to call
their favorite language "weak".

Devin

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 8:41 PM, Devin Jeanpierre
<jeanpierreda at gmail.com> wrote:
>> If you are going to use term idiosyncratically, then consider giving you
>> definition along with it. See
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strongly_typed
>> for a common usage, by which Python is strongly typed.
>
> The list of "strongly typed" languages is prefixed with the following warning:
>
>> Note that some of these definitions are contradictory, others are merely
>> orthogonal, and still others are special cases (with additional constraints)
>> of other, more "liberal" (less strong) definitions. Because of the wide
>> divergence among these definitions, it is possible to defend claims about
>> most programming languages that they are either strongly or weakly typed.
>
> That is the point I was trying to make.
>
> -- Devin
>
> On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 7:59 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
>> On 12/20/2011 7:51 PM, Devin Jeanpierre wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Not exactly true, and unnecessarily combative. More true is that careless
>>>> use of 'typed' has gotten tiresome. Python is strongly dynamically typed.
>>>> But people occasionally post -- again the same day you posted to python
>>>> list
>>>> -- that Python is weakly typed. I am tired of explaining that 'typed' is
>>>> not
>>>> synonymous with 'statically typed'.
>>>
>>>
>>> I don't find this much less careless. How do you differentiate between
>>> the "strong typing" of Python and the "strong typing" of Agda? It
>>> isn't a binary quantity.
>>>
>>> Perhaps, instead, we should stop claiming things are "strong" or
>>> "weak". If I said that, relatively speaking, Python is weakly typed,
>>> people would get offended -- not because I made any technically
>>> incorrect statement (on the spectrum, Python is far closer to assembly
>>> than Agda), but because to call it "weak" is insulting.
>>
>>
>> If you are going to use term idiosyncratically, then consider giving you
>> definition along with it. See
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strongly_typed
>> for a common usage, by which Python is strongly typed.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Terry Jan Reedy
>>
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