Chris Angelico wrote: > Marko Rauhamaa wrote: [...] > > The clouds I see looming over Python's head are: > > > > * 2-to-3 migration > > If that was going to kill Python, it would have had some > impact by now. There are students learning Python *today* > who are never going to have to worry about the migration, > because they're learning Python 3. > > > * static type annotation > > I'm not seeing very much of this in the wild yet, but > honestly, it's not that big a deal. You can ignore it if > you want to.
Kinda difficult to ignore type annotations when they are intermixed with the code! I never really had a problem with the idea of Python having type-hints, so long as the ugly annotations were kept _separated_ from the .py[w] files, but for some reason, the devs decided that mucking up Python's clean syntax for the sake of (what you claim is) a small minority of type-hint fanboys, was okay... The fanboys of type-hints claim that we will never (or hardly ever) see these annotations in the wild, but again, if that is the case, *IF* usage of this feature is really that rare, then why should it be given such power to undermine the readability of Python code? It is not too late! We are still in the very early stages of type-hints, and we can undo the damage that this "feature" will cause if we remove the hints from the .py[w] files entirely. Let the burden be on those who want this feature, not on those who don't want it. Futhermore, if we consider the damage that small changes (like the print statement versus print function and raw_input versus input) have caused, how can we expect (short of a self delusion) that type-hints will have no negative effects? There is one aspect of the internet that will never change, namely: persistance, and from now, and until Python disappears from the universe, there will always be a need to explain why `print` was changed from a statement to a function, along with an explanation of the subtle differences between python2's raw_input() and input() versus Python3's input(), not to mention the age old ramblings about classic classes versus new classes. And as much as we'd all like for these confusions to go away, they won't, because there is no way to "clean" the internet of every Python2 tutorial, blog or website that mentions these bygone features. The stain of Python3's violent and radical changes to the core philosophy of the language may never be washed clean, and although we might have survived Python3 _eventually_, type-hints is like a wooden stake driven into the heart of this community. It's almost like they _want_ to destroy this language. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list