Home Original page

[Python-ideas] Adding "Typed" collections/iterators to Python

Devin Jeanpierre jeanpierreda at gmail.com
Wed Dec 21 02:41:24 CET 2011 
> If you are going to use term idiosyncratically, then consider giving you
> definition along with it. See
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strongly_typed
> for a common usage, by which Python is strongly typed.

The list of "strongly typed" languages is prefixed with the following warning:

> Note that some of these definitions are contradictory, others are merely
> orthogonal, and still others are special cases (with additional constraints)
> of other, more "liberal" (less strong) definitions. Because of the wide
> divergence among these definitions, it is possible to defend claims about
> most programming languages that they are either strongly or weakly typed.

That is the point I was trying to make.

-- Devin

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 7:59 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
> On 12/20/2011 7:51 PM, Devin Jeanpierre wrote:
>>>
>>> Not exactly true, and unnecessarily combative. More true is that careless
>>> use of 'typed' has gotten tiresome. Python is strongly dynamically typed.
>>> But people occasionally post -- again the same day you posted to python
>>> list
>>> -- that Python is weakly typed. I am tired of explaining that 'typed' is
>>> not
>>> synonymous with 'statically typed'.
>>
>>
>> I don't find this much less careless. How do you differentiate between
>> the "strong typing" of Python and the "strong typing" of Agda? It
>> isn't a binary quantity.
>>
>> Perhaps, instead, we should stop claiming things are "strong" or
>> "weak". If I said that, relatively speaking, Python is weakly typed,
>> people would get offended -- not because I made any technically
>> incorrect statement (on the spectrum, Python is far closer to assembly
>> than Agda), but because to call it "weak" is insulting.
>
>
> If you are going to use term idiosyncratically, then consider giving you
> definition along with it. See
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strongly_typed
> for a common usage, by which Python is strongly typed.
>
>
> --
> Terry Jan Reedy
>
> _______________________________________________
> Python-ideas mailing list
> Python-ideas at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas
More information about the Python-ideas mailing list