5 ms·

People adapt to the circumstances. A lot of Python uses are no longer about fast iteration on the REPL. Instead of that we are shipping Python to execute in clu

People adapt to the circumstances. A lot of Python uses are no longer about fast iteration on the REPL. Instead of that we are shipping Python to execute in clusters on very long running jobs or inside servers. It's not only about having to start all over after hours, it's simply that concurrent and distributed execution environments are hostile to interactive programming. Now you can't afford to wait for an exception and launch the debugger in postmortem. Or even if you do it's not very useful. And now my personal opinion: If we are going the static typing way I would prefer simply to use Scala or similar instead of Python with types. Unfortunately in the same way that high performance languages like C attracts premature optimizers static types attract premature "abstracters" (C++ both). I also think that dynamic languages have the largest libraries for technical merit reasons. Being more "fluid" make them easier to mix. In the long term the ecosystem converges organically on certain interfaces between libraries. And so here we are with the half baked approach of gradual typing and #type: ignore everywhere.

yurishimo 1y ago
PHP is a great example of the convergence of interfaces. Now they have different “PSR” standards for all sorts of things. There is one for HTTP clients, formatting, cache interfaces, etc. As long as your library implements the spec, it will work with everything else and then library authors are free to experiment on the implementation and contribute huge changes to the entire ecosystem when they find a performance breakthrough. Types seem like a “feature” of mature software. You don’t need to use them all the time, but for the people stuck on legacy systems, having the type system as a tool in their belt can help to reduce business complexity and risk as the platform continues to age because tooling can be built to assert and test code with fewer external dependencies.
pydry 1y ago
Here we are because: * Types are expensive and dont tend to pay off on spikey/experimental/MVP code, most of which gets thrown away. * Types are incredibly valuable on hardened production code. * Most good production code started out spikey, experimental or as an MVP and transitioned. And so here we are with gradual typing because "throwing away all the code and rewriting it to be "perfect" in another language" has been known for years to be a shitty way to build products. Im mystified that more people here dont see that the value and cost of types is NOT binary ("they're good! theyre bad!") but exists on a continuum that is contingent on the status of the app and sometimes even the individual feature.
- tossandthrow 1y ago
  The issue with moving the ship where it's passanger wants it to be makes it more difficult for new passengers to get on. This is clearly seen with typescript and the movement for "just use JS". Furthermore, with LLMs, it should be easier than ever to experiment in one language and use another language for production loads.
- adalacelove 1y ago
  In some fields throwing away and rewriting is the standard, and it works, more or less. I'm thinking about scientific/engineering software: prototype in Python or Matlab and convert to C or C++ for performance/deployment constraints. It happens frequently with compilers too. I think migrating languages is actually more successful than writing second versions.
- cyberax 1y ago
  > * Types are expensive and dont tend to pay off on spikey/experimental/MVP code, most of which gets thrown away. Press "X" to doubt. Types help _a_ _lot_ by providing autocomplete, inspections, and helping with finding errors while you're typing. This significantly improves the iteration speed, as you don't need to run the code to detect that you mistyped a varible somewhere.
  - mixmastamyk 1y ago
    Pycharm, pyflakes, et all can do most of these without written types. The more interesting questions, like “should I use itertools or collections?” Autocomplete can’t help with.
- novok 1y ago
  I've found the transition point where types are useful to start even within a few hundred lines of code, and I've found types are not that restrictive if at all, especially if the language started out typed. The rare case I need to discard types that is available usually, and a code smell your doing something wrong. Even within a recent toy 1h python interview question having types would've saved me some issues and caught an error that wasn't obvious. Probably would've saved 10m in the interview.
zero_bias 1y ago
Python is ubiquitous in ML, often you have no choice but to use it
huflungdung 1y ago
[dead]

yurishimo 1y ago

PHP is a great example of the convergence of interfaces. Now they have different “PSR” standards for all sorts of things. There is one for HTTP clients, formatting, cache interfaces, etc. As long as your library implements the spec, it will work with everything else and then library authors are free to experiment on the implementation and contribute huge changes to the entire ecosystem when they find a performance breakthrough. Types seem like a “feature” of mature software. You don’t need to use them all the time, but for the people stuck on legacy systems, having the type system as a tool in their belt can help to reduce business complexity and risk as the platform continues to age because tooling can be built to assert and test code with fewer external dependencies.

pydry 1y ago

Here we are because: * Types are expensive and dont tend to pay off on spikey/experimental/MVP code, most of which gets thrown away. * Types are incredibly valuable on hardened production code. * Most good production code started out spikey, experimental or as an MVP and transitioned. And so here we are with gradual typing because "throwing away all the code and rewriting it to be "perfect" in another language" has been known for years to be a shitty way to build products. Im mystified that more people here dont see that the value and cost of types is NOT binary ("they're good! theyre bad!") but exists on a continuum that is contingent on the status of the app and sometimes even the individual feature.

tossandthrow 1y ago
The issue with moving the ship where it's passanger wants it to be makes it more difficult for new passengers to get on. This is clearly seen with typescript and the movement for "just use JS". Furthermore, with LLMs, it should be easier than ever to experiment in one language and use another language for production loads.
adalacelove 1y ago
In some fields throwing away and rewriting is the standard, and it works, more or less. I'm thinking about scientific/engineering software: prototype in Python or Matlab and convert to C or C++ for performance/deployment constraints. It happens frequently with compilers too. I think migrating languages is actually more successful than writing second versions.
cyberax 1y ago
> * Types are expensive and dont tend to pay off on spikey/experimental/MVP code, most of which gets thrown away. Press "X" to doubt. Types help _a_ _lot_ by providing autocomplete, inspections, and helping with finding errors while you're typing. This significantly improves the iteration speed, as you don't need to run the code to detect that you mistyped a varible somewhere.
- mixmastamyk 1y ago
  Pycharm, pyflakes, et all can do most of these without written types. The more interesting questions, like “should I use itertools or collections?” Autocomplete can’t help with.
novok 1y ago
I've found the transition point where types are useful to start even within a few hundred lines of code, and I've found types are not that restrictive if at all, especially if the language started out typed. The rare case I need to discard types that is available usually, and a code smell your doing something wrong. Even within a recent toy 1h python interview question having types would've saved me some issues and caught an error that wasn't obvious. Probably would've saved 10m in the interview.

zero_bias 1y ago

Python is ubiquitous in ML, often you have no choice but to use it

huflungdung 1y ago

[dead]