If you are going to be super-strict with type-checking, wouldn’t it be best to switch to a statically typed language and get the performance gains as well?

Hallelujah, that's always been my position. To the static typing folks: leave my dynamically typed languages alone and go coding with something that really suit your needs. If the answer is that Python, Ruby, JS, whatever are really much more pleasant to code with, my reply is that they are so precisely because we don't have to type type definitions. Tradeoffs.

Running more type checkers isn't really about strictness. The main benefit to library maintainers is to make sure that their APIs are compatible with whatever tools their users run.

This wouldn't really be an issue for most other languages, but Python's typing ecosystem is uniquely fragmented, with only partial standardization between several popular tools.

What statically typed language would you suggest for machine learning and large data pipelines? I don't love Python, but it has by far the largest ecosystem.

> If you are going to be super-strict with type-checking, wouldn’t it be best to switch to a statically typed language and get the performance gains as well?

You can use type-checking to get better performance already, without leaving Python. See https://blog.glyph.im/2022/04/you-should-compile-your-python...

Personally because I'm making a blender add on that only uses python, and it's at the complexity where having types catches a ton of bugs easily.

Python has other, bigger problems that make it a constant headache. One of them being the dismissive attitude towards any and all of problems that come from versioning, dependencies and quirks that make it challenging to have robustness.

Criticisms are typically dismissed by suggesting heaping yet another "solution" onto the growing pile of "solutions" that you have to drag around with you. That people have to learn. That you have to install tooling for. That has to be vetted. That has to become part of the toolbox to get even seemingly simple things done. This attitude is a big part of the reason that I strongly advise people against using Python in production. On top of all the problems presented in a real-world setting.

Almost all of the time, people who are fond of Python are more interested in defending python, disparaging me, downvoting me etc that listen to why I make that recommendation.

(I get it. People like Python. What I think of Python as a language is irrelevant. In fact I don't have that much against it. But I do have a lot against it in a setting where you need reliability and repeatability)

I have spent the last month of my life building a system that can run Python tooling reliably in a business critical application. I knew this was going to be a pretty big job when I started, but for every problem I solve, a bunch of new problems arise. I am starting to see light at the end of the tunnel but it hasn't exactly been smooth sailing. I'm almost there for a first version, but there are a bunch of problems still to solve. Mostly because I care about developer ergonomics and that things should "just work". One important goal is that my solution shouldn't impose any significant cognitive burden on people who use it. That's really hard.

(I don't think the solution will be open source since my contract wouldn't allow for it. But I'll make the case at some point for why it should be open sourced)

And yes. There are statically typed languages available today that have decent tooling that provides superior developer ergonomics. I can understand that people don't want to learn new languages, but if you have the capacity to do so I would recommend trying to move on if the code you write has to run outside your own workstation. If an old fart like me can learn and adopt new languages, so can you.

strict type checking is an incredibly useful tool for cases when you really want to make sure your code is correct and behaving as expected (one of many tools).

There are lots of people who like python and want to use it for things that where incorrect code has serious consequences. Type checking is helpful in these contexts.

Type checking remains optional for the masses and is not practical in many cases. Still, pushing away people who want to use all available tools for writing correct python only hurts the community.

Yeah, I can't say I really get the appeal of gradual typing. It's commented/documented code at best and outright lies at worst. Sure, you can build tooling around it and improve your DX a bit but isn't it always a house of cards?

Yes. If you have a choice.

For people who don't have a choice, type checked Python is better than nothing.

> If you are going to be super-strict with type-checking, wouldn’t it be best to switch to a statically typed language and get the performance gains as well?

I don't understand your question. The whole point of static code analysis is preventing bugs. Don't you like Python code to not have bugs that are easily caught with static code analysis, or is preventing code a foreign idea that is better left to other languages?

Seriously, just switch to Go or something

Yes, but unfortunately Python has invaded everything, and one must adapt.

Python is going to be preinstalled on almost any machine I use, with a reasonable assortment of libraries. And even if they're not preinstalled, the libraries I want are likely to exist. They'll have unstable APIs and weird quirks, and I'll have to take my choice of bad packaging systems to install them, and everything will just generally be a pain, but they'll exist and largely work. That's not true for any language I actually want to code in. I mean, I'm not going to deny that Python is better than shell scripts or (usually) C.

It's not like it's a pleasant language to code in, especially if you actually want to use the type support, which is weird and irregular and keeps changing and has to work around fundamental design problems at the core of the language.

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