this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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Programming
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I don't know how useful Options are in Python, with its duck typing. Python had something similar to
Option::None
all along -None
. It's possible to use None in Python is very idiomatic and surprising ways. Rust'sSome
andNone
are tagged unions. And Rust forces you to address them - unlike Python.Well, with the newer optional typing, it became
def foo(name: Optional[str]) -> Optional[str]: ...
and nowdef foo(name: str | None) -> str | None: ...
(No need to import Optional) It's quite nice.As for Rust, recall that Result is also a very similar union type. I think a lot of the aversions people have had to static typing have mostly just been about poor expressiveness in clunky type systems.
I have been programming in Python for nearly two decades now. This is the first I'm hearing about the
Optional
improvements to Python's type hints/annotations. Thanks a lot for this. I'm going to take a re-look into type hints.I'm aware that Rust enums, including Result, are tagged unions. However, my understanding is that it's not like that in Python. Python's duck typing is enabled by typing the values, rather than the variables. A variable can point to a value of any type. Am I getting this wrong? Or is
Optional
different somehow?