And typing JSON-like data is possible with TypedDict[1].
[0] https://docs.python.org/3/library/dataclasses.html
[1] https://docs.python.org/3/library/typing.html#typing.TypedDi...
To me, namedtuples are a convenience to give a nicer syntax than ordinary tuples in scenarios where I don't want the overhead of having to store a copy of all the keys with every object, like a dict would. Dataclass seems to be even more stuff on top of a class which is effectively even more stuff on top of a dict, but all the use cases of namedtuples are those where you want much less stuff than an ordinary class has. And I don't want to have to define a custom class just as I often don't define a custom namedtuple in my code but use the one the database driver generates based on the query, which is a very common use case for namedtuples as efficient temporary storage of data that then gets processed to something else.
How old is your Python, though? TypedDict is from 3.8. That was 5 years ago.
> @dataclass(frozen=True)
@dataclass(frozen=True)
class Foo:
bar: int
baz: str
@classmethod
def new(cls, bar: int) -> "Foo":
baz = calculate_baz(bar)
return cls(bar, baz)
foo = Foo.new(10)