[kazinator]

The article's author is using Blub static types, in which you're declaring that the variable that captures something from the cache is a Pet handle.

Under a properly modern static typing system, you let that be inferred:

  let var = cache.get("key");

var is of whatever type that the cache object returns. Even clunky old C++ can do this with auto.

That author will most likely die in some statically statically typed corner he painted himself into.