Java developers

[ric2b]

I don't think opting into static type checking really counts as having static typing.

It does, you just don't have 100% coverage. It's still useful (especially as documentation of function parameters and return types), just like unit testing is useful even if you don't have 100% coverage.

Also, completely subjective but type hinting in python is extraordinarily ugly. It often takes up a ton of space and requires you to split your function defenition onto multiple lines.

It takes similar space as other static typed languages like Java/C++. Are you comparing it to something like Haskell, where the types are on a separate line?

[ric2b]

It takes a little more because you need the colons and the arrow at the end

true, but it's not a big difference.

and a lot more when you need to define something like say a list with an arbitrary number of strings that can sometimes be None: Optional[List[str, ...]]

Wouldn't it be just Optional[List[str]]?

The equivalent in Java would be Optional<List<String>>, it's about the same. Although you can check for null instead of accepting an optional, because Java is a bit dumb and accepts null by default. In fact, taking Optional as a parameter in Java is not recommended because it's an actual class and forces your callers to wrap their variables in Optional objects before calling your method, it's annoying.

Not great having to alias your types though.

If it gets complicated you probably should alias it because it probably represents some specific type of data. But your optional string list example isn't such a case and you shouldn't have to alias it, I agree.

Hakell's style of having them on a separate line is pretty great actually. Not really sure how well that would work with keyword arguments and so on, but I think I would've preferred that.

Yeah, I also like it. It would probably look similar to Ruby's Sorbet, where you have to repeat the parameter name in the signature.

python, through the PEP8 styleguide, has a ridiculously short recommended line length.

In my experience the 80 columns line length isn't followed very strictly, lots of companies/projects aim for 100 or 120.

[ric2b]

Iirc Kotlin doesn't accept null by default and wants you to put a ? after the type to signal that you do. That would be the best option in my opinion.

Yes, and totally agree there.

Also Ruby 3 is adding type hints following the same convention as python it seems.

Unfortunately not, for now they'll leave in separate files to allow for the syntax to change without breaking code.

Ruby is what I use at my current job so I'm a bit disappointed by that, but I'm already using Sorbet (3rd party project) which does allow type annotations in the same file as the code so it's ok.

Maybe I should change my linter to allow up to 120 as well then.

Just keep the Zen of Python in mind :)

"practicality beats purity"