52 karma · joined October 9, 2020
Python typing is like that. If I say a function takes a List[int], but you know I'm just calling a for loop, you can ignore it and hand me a Set[int]. Maybe it breaks some day, but you're allowed to take that risk, if you have a need.
Do either of these things do anything comments couldn't? Not really. But they're ways of indicating intended semantics without formally documenting your stuff, and when most of what you use the language for is scripts, that's actually pretty helpful. People actually use type hints in a way they didn't with comments, and that's caused a major improvement in code readability. Or at least that's been my experience
You can absolutely look at all this and say python's a crazy, terrible language you never want to touch, but if you've got no choice on language for whatever reason, or you're throwing something together and don't feel like writing `private static final synchronized` forty time, type hints are great.
1. Causing great surprise or wonder; astonishing. 1.1 [informal] Startlingly impressive
Did pointedly ignoring common usage add anything here?