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0 pointsGTP1y ago0 comments

> BTW, Typescript also does not enforce types at runtime. Heck, C++ does not enforce types at runtime either. It does not mean that their static typing systems don't help during at development time.

Speaking of C here as I don't have web development experience. The static type system does help, but in this case, it's the compiler doing the check at compile time to spare you many surprises at runtime. And it's part of the language's standard. Python itself doesn't do that. Good that you can use external tools, but I would prefer if this was part of Python's spec.

Edit: these days I'm thinking of having a look at Mojo, it seems to do what I would like from Python.

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kortex1y ago

https://github.com/python/mypy

> Python itself doesn't do that

The type syntax is python. MyPy is part of Python. It's maintained by the python foundation. Mypy is not part of CPython because modularity is good, the same way that ANSI C doesn't compile anything, that's what gcc, clang, etc are for.

Mojo is literally exactly the same way, the types are optional, and the tooling handles type checking and compilation.

GTPOP1y ago

> Mojo is literally exactly the same way.

No, because in Mojo, type checking is part of the language specification: you need no external tool for that. Python defines a syntax that can be used for type checking, but you need an external tool to do that. GCC does type checking because it's defined in the language specification. You would have a situation analogous to Python only if you needed GCC + some other tool for type checking. This isn't the case.

zo11y ago

You're really splitting hairs here all to prove some sort of "type checking isn't included with python" property. Even if you're technically right, half the world really doesn't care and most code being churned out in Python is type-hinted, type-checked, and de-facto enforced at design time.

It's honestly winning the long-term war because traditional languages have really screwed things up with infinite and contrived language constructs and attempts just to satisfy some "language spec" and "compiler", whilst still trying to be expressive enough for what developers need and want to do safely. Python side-stepped all of that, has the perfect mix of type-checking and amazing "expressibility", and is currently proving that it's the way forward with no stopping it.

GTPOP1y ago

I'm not saying that no one should use Python, I'm just saying why I don't like it. But if you instead like it I will not try to stop you using it.

This said, if most people use type hints and the proper tooling to enforce type checking, I would say this would be a good reason to properly integrate (optional) static typing in the language: it shows that most programmers like static typing. The problem I focused on in my example isn't the only advantage of a type system.

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kortex1y ago

https://github.com/python/mypy

> Python itself doesn't do that

Mojo is literally exactly the same way, the types are optional, and the tooling handles type checking and compilation.

GTPOP1y ago

> Mojo is literally exactly the same way.

zo11y ago

GTPOP1y ago

I'm not saying that no one should use Python, I'm just saying why I don't like it. But if you instead like it I will not try to stop you using it.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse