[time_to_smile]

I'll never understand the desire to bolt types onto Python.

Dynamic typing is not a deficiency, it's a design choice. SICP for example, is filled with small examples of things you can do with dynamic languages you cannot trivially do with static one. There are certain styles of solving problems that suit dynamic languages particularly well, and anyone programming in a dynamic language should understand and embrace these.

There are of course drawbacks to dynamic typing, as is typically the case you exchange predictability for flexibility.

If, for your given problem or preferred style of programming, you want types there are so many fantastic languages around today that have much better type systems than what was available when Python was first gaining popularity.

Programming well in a statically typed language is fundamentally different than programming well in a dynamically typed language. Typing in python will never be powerful enough to allow you to "think in types", and if it were then python really wouldn't be python anymore.

[shagmin]

Python is strongly typed though, in addition to being dynamically typed like you said. I think that makes Python a great language for type hints. I know the language won't do an unexpected conversion the way javascript would, yet variables aren't confined to just one type since it's dynamic - and the type hints don't hinder that at all. It's basically just an extra feature in Python for helping lint tools and as documentation for the user.

[orangecat]

99+% of Python code is not intentionally using dynamic typing in order to take advantage of wacky SICP algorithms. It's good that Python allows that flexibility, but it's also good that in much more common cases you can indicate that a function argument should be a string rather than an int and have IDEs and linters be aware of that.

[ReflectedImage]

The usage of dynamic typing gets rid of a lot of boiler plate code and over complicated designs. Python code that doesn't use typing is generally better than Python code that does.

[aranchelk]

Would you please give an example of an algorithm or technique you think is particularly poorly suited (or impossible) in a statically typed language?

I’m curious to see how different an equivalent solution might look in a statically typed language and if any features like type classes or row polymorphism close that gap.

[mountainriver]

Yeah it’s just that Python dominates some ecosystems like machine learning. There isn’t much of a choice, so making these code based more maintainable is a valiant effort