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Comment by paiute | Hacker News Reader

I'm increasingly frustrated by industry trends of more types. After 20 years I like typing less and less. Even with c++ code bases tend toward various methods of eliminating strong typing. Javascript didn't need types. pythons type hint are close to ideal, but anything other than primitive almost isn't worth adding type hints. who doesn't just toss args in a dict?

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> who doesn't just toss args in a dict?

Me? Args in a dict, or worse, `**kwargs` chained through multiple functions, are awful to deal with.

I'm really curious about your stance. If anything, typing has gotten easier and better over 20 years. Types used to be verbose, you had to type out all characters, compiler messages were terrible. Now, type systems are better, inferred, flexible and structural subtyping is great. Type checkers are almost real-time. Autocomplete saves me keystrokes. Errors are helpful.

I used to hate types, 10 years ago, writing Java in Notepad++. Now I write python w/ mypy, go, and rust in Intellij, with lots of plugins to speed up autocomplete, and lint in real time.

I love your comment. I'm the complete opposite of you I thought python was stupid when I was younger and thought c++ was awesome and things should be well typed. now I'm crotchety and avoid typed languages. all you need is data and functions - I know not everyone thinks this way.

Thanks for the reply! I think it highlights the fact that much of the "typing wars" depends a huge amount on what you're working on and how you like to work.

I wager much strain comes simply from individuals working in environments that force them to lean on their weaknesses.

I was absolutely floundering in one department simply because the senior devs loved bash and python2 and dynamic runtime everything and my brain couldn't keep up with the lack of structure.

> Javascript didn't need types

Have you heard about Typescript?

I have used it and don't care for it

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