Ian Bicking: the old part of his blog

People need to chill

People are freaking out way too much about Guido's static type post. Isn't Guido allowed to speculate and offer some ideas without people predicting that Python is utterly doomed? It's not like static typing could possibly, even given community consensus, happen for several years. And there's clearly not community consensus.

So relax, nothing bad is going to happen. I guess people are a little spooked by the @ thing, which seemed abrupt. But even then there was a big discussion, and that was for something with a far, far smaller impact on the language. It's much more helpful just to talk about the issue of typing. It can't be good for Guido's thought process if he's unable to float an idea without it turning into such an emotional situation.

Created 05 Jan '05

Comments:

""" It's not like static typing could possibly, even given community consensus, happen for several years."""

Why not? The design hasn't been fleshed out yet, but once that is done, and it doesn't break any existing code, then it could be here quite soon. Especially considering that Guido is apparently interested in this (as opposed to a feature he doesn't care much about).

# Hans

But static typing is really really hard. Parameterized types are hard. In particular, the implications are hard. Decorators were really really easy, this isn't that kind of change.
# Ian Bicking

Guido doesn't sound like he's asking for opinions on the desirability of a static type option. That decision appears made. He's pretty clearly asking for opinions on implementation.
# Eric

Here, here! Everyone is flying off the hilt here on this one. I wish people would just calm down. This has not even gone to python-dev yet, let alone to a PEP. All Guido has done is ask for the AST branch to be finished and while a requirement for the ideas he is throwing out there it needed to be done anyway. This is all just a brain dump by Guido to his blog.

# Brett