Re:Writing Python Like Rust
by cmrdporcupine on Thursday June 29, 2023 @10:03AM
(#36520488)
It's funny how the pendulum swings. 10-15 years ago sticking your neck our and advocating for static types was like painting a target on your back. Everything was about dynamic languages, Ruby was the coolest of cool, and people who waved the placard of high level types, type inference, etc. from the ML/Haskell cool were seen on the whole as impractical academic ivory tower types, cloistered around Lambda The Ultimate...
When I advocated for the importance of static typing for software robustness the response I got from many other industry people I knew was that this was the job of intensive unit testing. That the supposed loss of rapid turnaround that came with static types wasn't worth it, and that test-first-design solved this problem.
Now Typescript and Rust are common place, and we have Pythonistas annotating their programs with types. I'm happy, but maybe a bit bitter about the past :-)
When I advocated for the importance of static typing for software robustness the response I got from many other industry people I knew was that this was the job of intensive unit testing. That the supposed loss of rapid turnaround that came with static types wasn't worth it, and that test-first-design solved this problem.
Now Typescript and Rust are common place, and we have Pythonistas annotating their programs with types. I'm happy, but maybe a bit bitter about the past :-)