[liendolucas]

> The other thing typing does is allow for refactoring code.

No. What allows you confident refactoring code are automated tests. I honestly can't understand why people are so obsessed about types, especially in languages like Python or Javascript.

[jerrygenser]

It's not just about types. It's about having interfaces I should expand on. And, I'm assuming there are automated tests, otherwise and typing is additive. I should clarify that it's also having defined interfaces using the type system to do it.

By depending on interfaces/abstractions instead of specific cases you can refactor the interface and not break clients. It's very difficult to do this unless you have types.

This is something that Go is really good at and encourages but can be done with python/js on top of their type systems.

[tmh88j]

> I honestly can't understand why people are so obsessed about types,

Types in Python feel like an added layer of confidence that my code is structured the way I expect it to be. PyCharm frequently catches incorrect argument types and other mistakes I've made while coding that would likely result in more time spent debugging. If you don't use any tools that leverage types you won't see any benefit.

[nomel]

> I honestly can't understand why people are so obsessed about types

It's a very powerful sanity check that lets me write correct code faster, avoiding stupid bugs that the unit tests will also, eventually, find.

And, to me, reading the code is much much nicer. Types provide additional context to what's going on, at first glance, so I don't have to try to guess what something is, based on its name:

    results: list[SomeAPIResult] = some_api.get_results()

is much easier to grock.

[hbrn]

> I don't have to try to guess what something is, based on its name

It's probably just a bad example, but in case it isn't:

Sounds like you ended up at the same place. You went from guessing what is some_api.get_results(), based on it's name, to guessing what is SomeAPIResult, also based on it's name.

If some_api is your library, then you could have just added type hints to get_results() and let type inference do it's job.

If it's a third party library, then using your custom SomeAPIResult means that code is becoming alien to other engineers that worked with that library in the past. It might be worth it, but it's definitely controversial. You probably should've done it with stubs anyway.

[nomel]

> guessing what is SomeAPIResult

I disagree. It’s not a guess, it is precisely what it is, where the variable name is free to betray me. A sane IDE/linter will tell me if my local assumption is incorrect, where a variable called result_SomeAPIResult relies on an assumed, possibly ancient, state of reality.

[hbrn]

You do realize nobody writes code like that, right? Even in static typing land people rely on type inference.

list[SomeAPIResult] in your example is redundant. You can get all the benefits of types without it.

[nomel]

Type inference is good for the writer, not the reader.

Relying on type inference isn’t some rule. Your can find many projects that use it selectively, being explicit where it makes sense. The point of writing code is to make it readable and maintainable. The explicit type isn’t redundant, it’s explicit in presentation, and can be functional, like my example.

I mean, just look at this example. You know the type without having to dig in, do you not? You don’t have to look at the function definition. You know immediately. That’s the point of being explicit, where it makes sense. No guessing, where it makes sense. This is why we have all these type hints now, in a dynamic language: because guessing sucks.

[dragonwriter]

> What allows you confident refactoring code are automated tests.

Typing facilitates automated testing; e.g., hypothesis can infer test strategies for type-annotated code.

[mmcnl]

Shorter feedback loops = increased productivity.