[uranusjr]

> That's what drives me crazy. I come from the statically typed world. This bit of Python's philosophy really clashes with my world view.

That’s the kind of the culture shock you get learning dynamic type languages with a static type pov. Type hinting is not really the problem here, but can seem that way because it makes dynamically typed code too superficially similar that it enters the uncanny valley if you treat it like statically typed.

One way that might make this easier is to forget about type hinting entirely at first and learn the language “from scratch”, and add the types back after you get used to write dynamically typed code. Dynamically typed code have its advantage and isn’t bad without type hints (well, at least you have to convince yourself on this, or you’ll never be able to learn a dynamic type language), and the type hints just add back some of the nice things static type provides without compromising dynamic type benefits.

[the_af]

Agreed, but it also clashes with the world view that brought us Typescript, which I also find better than Python's type hinting.

In addition, it makes it harder for me to argue in favor of type annotations with my coworkers. My coworkers come from neither world, static or dynamic; they are learning the ropes. And they just can't see the point. I'm confident I would convince them were this a statically typed language, but with Python I'm lost.

[uranusjr]

The TypeScript comparison is on an entirely different axis though, the compiled <-> interpreted one. One of the reasons languages go with the type hinting route is actually to avoid a separate compilation step like TypeScript. That may be totally fine for you (again coming from a statically typed language where this is more or less required), but it’s a hill many are willing to die on. It’s all tradeoffs and design decisions.

[the_af]

Agreed it's a different axis, that's why I said "also clashes". I of course think Typescript's choice in this tradeoff was the better one, even though I'm not particularly in love with Typescript either.

At some point everything in proglang is preferences and design decisions, but for me, there are better and worse tradeoffs to make.