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Comment by ncmncm | Hacker News Reader

Some of us do think this about Python, at least for serious work. Many, many Python programmers admit that code in it needs a lot more testing to make up for the lack of built-in type safety, and guard against runtime violation traps.

So, no, it's not ridiculous. Overstated, possibly. But I am less interested in Go than ten minutes ago.

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That has nothing to do with textual type annotations. That is just Pythons lack of static type checking.

Textual type annotations and static type checking tend to go hand in hand. There's no point in using type annotations if the language doesn't do anything to validate that they are true.

TONS of languages don't have written type annotations all over the place and still have static type checking.

> There's no point in using type annotations if the language doesn't do anything to validate that they are true.

Yes, but there's _plenty_ of use for static type validations even if you don't use type annotations.

If there's some level of confidence you're missing when using python because of the explicit types, you'd be better off making up for it using asserts rather than additional tests.

I think his point is that Python developers often do wish that they could have type validation written into the language, rather than having to litter code with assertions.

I certainly feel that way.

Add MyPy to your build process (or just your local editing setup) and you can:

http://mypy-lang.org/

(Disclaimer: I've not used it, I just think it's a reasonable idea.)

I think his point might actually have been the point he made rather than the different point you made.

That's a roundabout way of saying "no you're wrong" without saying why you think so.

Why do you think so?

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