I don't understand why this discussion on optional static typing came up right at this moment. As far as I know, it has been discussed many times in the past, and there even was a SIG that simply died... but it seems that it never was something of much interest to python developers (that's my impression, I might be wrong).
Now, that the Pypy project is steadily advancing (and which is aimed at making Python faster while keeping it dynamic and simple), why has this topyc been raised? Also there's starkiller, which deals with agressive type inference and compilation to native code. If these projects are serious and are well headed, then I don't know why we are talking now of static typing. Lets say that Pypy and/or Starkiller end up as succesful projects, what would be the advantage of having static typing in Python? -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list