dataclasses author here. That's not true. You can use make_dataclass the same way you can use namedtuple: >>> from dataclasses import make_dataclass >>> A

dataclasses author here. That's not true. You can use make_dataclass the same way you can use namedtuple: >>> from dataclasses import make_dataclass >>> A = make_dataclass("A", ["x", "y", "z"]) >>> A(1, 2, 3) A(x=1, y=2, z=3) It is true that if you want to use @dataclass you have to use annotations, just the way you do with typing.NamedTuple. But as others have noted, the annotation is mostly ignored. [edited for formatting]