written on Friday, December 1, 2023
A lot has been said about Python typing. If you have been following me on Twitter (or you have the dubious pleasure of working with me), you probably know my skepticism towards Python typing. This stems from the syntax's complexity, the sluggishness of mypy, the overall cumbersome nature of its implementation and awkwardness of interactions with it. I won't dwell on these details today, instead I want to take you on a little journey back to my early experiences with Python. Why? Because I believe the conflict between the intrinsic philosophy of Python and the concept of typing is fundamental and profound, but also not new.
The concept of typed programming languages predates 2015 by a long stretch. They were not invented now. Debates over the necessity of typing are not a recent phenomenon at all. When you wanted to start a new software project, particularly something that resembles a web service you always had a choice of programming language. Back in 2004 when I started diving into programming, there were plenty of languages to chose. The conventional choice was not Python, the obvious choice was not even PHP rather Java. Java was the go-to for serious web application projects, given its typing system and enterprise-grade features. PHP was for toys, Python was nowhere to be found. PHP was popular, but in my circles it was always seen as an entirely ridiculous concept and the idea that someone would build a business on it even more so. I remember in my first year of University the prevalent opinion was that the real world runs on .NET, Java and C++. PHP was ridiculed, Python and Ruby did not appear in conversations and JavaScript on the server was non existent.
Yet here I was, I built stuff in PHP and Python. My choice wasn't driven by an aversion to static typing out of laziness but by the exceptional developer experience these languages offered, to a large part because of the lack of types. There was a stellar developer experience. Yes it did not have intellisense, but all the changes that I did appear on the web instantly. I recall directly modifying live websites via FTP in real time. Later editing web sites straight from vim on the production server. Was it terrible and terrifying? Absolutely. But damn it was productive. I learned a lot from that. They taught me valuable lessons about trade-offs. It was not just me that learned that, an entire generation of developers in those languages learned that our biggest weakness (it not being typed, and i wasn't compiled) was also our biggest strength. It required a bit of restraint and it required a slightly different way of programming, but it was incredibly productive.
There was the world of XPath, there was the world of DTDs, there was the world of SOAP and WSDL. There was the world where the inherent complexity of the system was so great, that you absolutely required an IDE, code generation and compile time tooling. In contrast there was my world. My world had me sitting with Vim, CVS and SVN and a basic Linux box and I was able to build things that I was incredibly proud of. I eventually swapped PHP for Python because it had better trade offs for me. But I will never not recognize what PHP gave me: I learned from it that not everything has to be pretty, it has to solve problems. And it did.
But in the same way with PHP, the total surface area between me and the Python language runtime was tiny. The code I wrote, was transformed by the interpreter into bytecode instructions (which you could even look at!) and evaluated by a tiny loop in the interpreter. The interpreter was Open Source, it was easy to read, and most importantly I was able to poke around in it. Not only was I able to learn more about computers this way, it also made it incredibly easy for me to understand what exactly was going on. Without doubt I was able to understand everything between the code that I wrote, and the code that ran end to end.
Yes, there was no static type checking and intellisense was basically non existing. Companies like Microsoft did not even think that Python was a language yet. But screw it, we were productive! Not only that, we build large software projects. We knew were the tradeoffs were. We had runtime errors flying left and right in production because bad types were passed, but we also had the tools to work with it! I distinctly remember how blown away a colleague from the .NET world was when I showed him some of the tools I had. That after I deployed bad code and it blew up in someone's face, I got an email that not only shows a perfectly readable stack trace, but also a line of source code for the frames. He was even more blown away when I showed him that I had a module that allowed me to attach remotely to the running interpreter and execute Python code on the fly to debug it. The developer experience was built around there being very few layers in the onion.
But hear me out: all the arguments against dynamic languages and dynamic typing systems were already there! Nothing new has been invented, nothing really has changed. We all knew that there was value in typing, and we also all collectively said: screw it. We don't need this, we do duck typing. Let's play this to our advantage.
Here is what has changed: we no longer trust developers as much and we are re-introducing the complexity that we were fighting. Modern Python can at times be impossible to comprehend for a developer. In a way in some areas we are creating the new Java. We became the people we originally displaced. Just that when we are not careful we are on a path to the world's worst Java. We put typing on a language that does not support it, our interpreter is slow, it has a GIL. We need to be careful not to forget that our roots are somewhere else. We should not collectively throw away the benefits we had.
The winds changed, that's undeniable. Other languages have shown that types add value in new and exciting ways. When I had the arguments with folks about Python vs Java typing originally, Java did not even have generics. JavaScript was fighting against its reputation of being an insufferable toy. TypeScript was years away from being created. While nothing new has been invented, some things were popularized. Abstract data types are no longer a toy for researchers. .NET started mixing static and dynamic typing, TypeScript later popularized adding types to languages originally created without them. There are also many more developers in our community who are less likely to understand what made those languages appealing in the first place.
So, where does this leave us? Is this a grumpy me complaining about times gone and how types are ruining everything? Hardly. There's undeniable utility in typing, and there is an element that could lead to greater overall productivity. Yet, the inherent trade-offs remain unchanged, and opting for or against typing should be a choice free from stigma. The core principles of this decision have not altered: types add value and they add cost.
Post script: Python is in a spot now where the time spent for me typing it, does not pay dividends. TypeScript on the other hand tilts more towards productivity for me. Python could very well reach that point. I will revisit this.